What children can teach you about Mindset flexibility

Not Safe hands school kids. As a media person I’m careful to get photo approvals for minors.

Last week I spent a few hours at Safe Hands School with a bunch of 6 to 11 year olds.

I was kind of nervous. How do I keep this group engaged, how much did I need to simplify my words? But I got there and discovered this was a very smart lot and I shouldn’t have worried. 

It was Literacy week and basically I took them through my somewhat colorful career in literacy and then I  had a few of them come up stage for a small Q& A session about theirs and their proposed timelines.

Turns out they found some parts of my path interesting and wanted to toe that line. But that’s not all. They had some pretty intelligent questions to ask about the parts that interested them. When I finally got off stage, I commented to their head teacher Mrs Oladipo who with her team is doing a fantastic job that I was surprised and touched by their choices and you know what she said?

‘ They are in the moment’

And I laughed. 

So basically if a Medical Doctor showed up they would be asking about where to buy stethoscopes or something.

Then I realized why people are advised to be creative from a childlike state. It is a state of openness and sees possibilities in everything. That is the state that breeds success. They were showing fantastic signs of  mind flexibility I mean imagine if you could:

Start a new career today and give it a lot of passion. How far would you go?
Imagine  if you were open minded enough to  try something new if it failed and with that same range of passion.
Lastly imagine if someone brought a new venture to you and you listened attentively, took notes and the followed up with questions then considered it’s possibilities...
One of the highlights was when the head boy who is about 10 summarized the Ukraine war for me in a few sentences then followed up with deep thoughts about NATO. 

I was gobsmacked. At 10 I was probably binging on Maxie’s World or the Spiral Zone.

The aim was for me to inspire these kids guess what ? They probably  inspired me even more because I’m at a stage where I can actually do something about it. 

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