Quips & Tips
Inspiration for parents, teachers, counselors, and mentors of
girls

#4

Is your daughter lacking in personal passion? Is she a TV and popcorn addict, or is she just generally uninspired to do much besides hang out with her friends?

Our instant-gratification, media-saturated world can interfere with a girl’s motivation to develop hobbies and interests she enjoys. Her activities may be limited to passive, time-gobbling TV watching, and it may be hard for her to get excited about a longer-term project that moves at a slower pace and require her to take concrete action.

Want to help? Don’t just limit TV time, remind her that she has other activity options that could be very rewarding. If she spends a little time making an effort to find activites she likes, she could discover something truly wonderful that gives her life new dimension.

Here’s a quick list you can give her for a inspiration.

Ten ways to make sure you’re pursuing your passion:

1. Understand why there’s power in passion. According to one study (Bashaw and Grant), your personal inspiration is more critical in achieving your goals than your intelligence, ability, and income.

2. Dream a little (or big) dream. In your perfect world, what are you doing? This should supply lots of clues on what makes you tick.

3. See when time flies. If you lose track of how many hours have elapsed while you’ve been painting, researching, skating, or creating, it’s a bonafide passion.

4. Listen to your gut. “Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way,” said philosopher Florence Scovel Shinn (1877–1940).

5. Not sure what your passion is? Explore many possibilites. Take classes in all kinds of subjects, explore after-school options you might never considered if you weren’t intentionally being so open-minded, make yourself available so something can grab you.

6. Start something. No more procrastinating. You’ve heard of the law of inertia? A girl at rest on the couch tends to stay at rest on the couch. Get up!

7. If you hit a pothole, dust yourself off and keep moving down the road. Remember, says actor Christina Ricci, “Everything is fixable. Nothing in life is ever set in stone.”

8. Don’t waste time pursuing anything but your passion.

9. On the other hand, occasionally stop so you can avoid burnout. Spend time with your friends, connect with your family, do other things.

10. Don’t let anyone talk you out of pursuing your passion. Listen to foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour’s advice: “People will always try to knock you in life—and knock your dreams. In a peculiar way, that’s not such a bad thing. In the end, it gives you an opportunity to prove you want it enough and that you’re strong enough to keep going.”

Quips & Tips #5

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Copyright by Catherine Dee

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