How can you teach your daughter to stand out from the crowd?
♥ Encourage them to follow their passion. To stand out from the crowd, empower your daughter to embrace their passion. No matter what it is, show support! If your daughter loves to read, write, play music, or dance…be engaged and active in showing them support to pursue that passion. There are people who have gone through their entire lives without truly finding and understanding what their passions are. If your daughter has it figured out, let her shine! While she is young and impressionable, give her the positive environment she needs to grow that passion! Praise is key to encouraging your daughters but be careful to praise efforts, process, strategies and not abilities. Praise their effort and attempt and not their person. For instance:
Instead of ⇒ Helping others comes to you easily.
Try ⇒I love the process with which you help others.
♥ Be a leader for them to look up to. We all know how important it is to lead by example, right? Show them how truly awesome and amazing it can be to stand out from others. Communicate it to them as well. While there are times that actions can speak louder than words, sometimes a good conversation with your daughters about how they perceive you and your strong attributes is important also. There may be excellent points that arise between the two of you to dive deeper into the topic of standing out. Make time for those important topics! Answer their questions, engage with their concerns and tackle those topics that they may be wanting to explore.
♥ Let them know that trying and failing is perfectly fine. Part of the reason that your daughter may not want to stand out from the crowd, is that she may be fearful of failure. Aren’t we all to a degree? Putting yourself out there and taking a chance, to only fail or not succeed is not something that sounds overly enticing, right? Take away that worry of failure by relating to their thought. Give them examples of how you’ve both succeeded and failed at attempts that you’ve tried in life. Instead of looking at failure as a negative, find a way to build upon it so it is positive. You can show them that every person in life fails at something, but if they never try at anything, how will they know their true potential? This is also a perfect time to teach them about the growth mindset. We need to help them move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. We can help change our daughter’s mindset by teaching to rephrase their words. for instance,
⇒Instead of ” I suck at this “. Use: “I am working on getting better at this”.
⇒ Instead of “I am afraid I will make mistakes”. Use: ” When I make mistakes, I will learn from it, try again and get better”
♥ Let them have a voice. Encourage them to speak up when they have thoughts, ideas or interests. Having a voice, using it and then actually being heard is amazing. No one wants to be considered a “yes” person their entire life, where every time an idea or thought is brought forward, they are known to just go along with it and agree. Your daughters have the power and the ability to speak their mind, and their thoughts in a respectful way. Give them the courage to stand up for themselves, and their beliefs to be able to use their voice confidently.
♥ Allow them wiggle room. Let them try out their options, their thoughts, what they think that they want to do…and just be there with them along their journey. Most often than not, we try to help them make choices because we hate to see them fail or make mistakes, remember mistakes help them learn and challenges makes them stronger. There doesn’t have to be a dedicated path that they have to stay on…life is a journey that we all have control over. How we reach our goals and arrive at our destination can be an exciting journey that is fun to take together!
Why Blend in when you can stand out? I tell my daughters every time not to follow the crowd. It is a common thing for them to want imitate their friends because they want to belong or feel among, of which so many girls have their hands burnt while at it. The more reason we need to continue to teach them to stand out. Uniqueness according to the Oxford dictionary means “to be one of a kind”. It simply means you have qualities that make you stand out from others. Positive uniqueness is what we should focus on here. I am working hard and praying that my daughters are unique and confident in the skin God has created them.
Your daughters were born to sparkle and shine! Click To Tweet
Raising strong and independent daughters, who can stand out from the crowd is an amazing gift. Use your unconditional love for them to encourage them to find their passion in life. Being unique is a wonderful characteristic that many people seem to lack, or struggle to embrace. Help them, by being their strong and resilient guiding light throughout their journey.
