We Can Do Hard Things

Did you grow up with written-out family values or house rules posted somewhere in your home?

I’m not talking about platitudes and clichés you could find on a pillow at Hobby Lobby, rather, did your parents take the time to come up with and declare the guiding principles for how things happen at your house? Things that set your family apart from how other families did things and made you feel like part of a team?

I think this might be more common with my generation of parents (X’ers to Millennials), which is a little bit more obsessed with defining our own identity and working on the self than was en vogue when we were kids. (Not that our families didn’t have rules or values growing up, it just maybe wasn’t as commonplace for parents to state them like we do).

In our house, we strive to be “growth mindset” parents, and “personal accountability” parents, and “we love you no matter what” parents.

Based on what we have decided about how we want to raise our children, and given their ages (we have four, age nine and under), we’ve made ten kid-size “rules” about what it means to live in our house and grow up in our family.

These ten family rules are posted on our refrigerator.

Number one and number seven have been the ones that have “stuck” as repeated slogans for how we approach life within the walls of our home.  

Especially in the midst of conflict or frustration, we want our kids to know that:

People are more important than things (Rule #1)….

and also that, while life is hard: We can do hard things (Rule #7).  

“I can do hard things”

We learned this parenting mantra from the leader of our very first small group as a married couple, Scott, who is a few years ahead of us in the parenting journey. We’d hear him tell his two young daughters: “Gates Girls can do hard things” when our firstborn was a baby.  We adopted this slogan from the Gates family in our house and now, often, you’ll hear our four kids optimistically reference their own ability to persevere in the face of struggle: “Griffins can do hard things.”  

As adults and business leaders we need to remember this too. We can do hard things!  

Grownups who freeze or flee whenever they encounter a hard thing will sure miss out on the great joys and adventures that life has to offer. Hard things are part of life, impossible to avoid. If we can instill in our children a mindset that something being difficult doesn’t mean they don’t go for it, but instead that they are capable, incredible, problem-solving, little doers… we think this will help them into adolescence and adulthood.

“Griffins can do hard things. Keep going…” we’ll say.

In the phase of life that we’re in right now, this comes out with kid-size challenges…

shoe-tying,

math homework,

putting all the lids on the markers,

and taking that new huge Lego set one page at a time.

Between the two of us, Dan and I have supportively said “you can do hard things” to each other for grownup-size challenges…

like giving birth,

leading an intervention for a relative,

saying goodbye to a family pet,

and leaving a cushy job and starting a business.

We all need reminders and encouragement from one another. Our ten family rules give us a shared language for this.

The Griffin Family Rules that we have posted on our refrigerator will probably evolve as our kids grow. Hopefully we’ll be able to replace the one about keeping our hands and feet to ourselves with something about being good stewards of our finances. The practice of writing out how we do things in our house based on our parenting values, and what we expect of those who live here, is something we will do forever.

In Business

Family-life rules for school-age kids do not translate perfectly into business… but what does translate into business-life is having a set of stated company values.  

Having the values of an organization clearly defined, posted, understood, and applied at all levels of any organization, sustains an understanding and keeps everyone aligned in how things are done within the walls of the business and out in the world.

This is so very important. That’s why we include a recommendation for company values after all our Groundwork Workshops (even though the messaging deliverable is mostly external messaging).  

Write It Out. Let us know how we can help you with your own rules or values — for your family or your business! 

P.S. We made “I can do hard things” water bottle stickers for our kiddos and their friends.  If you, a kid in your life, or an employee needs this sticker… contact us, we’d love to mail you one!