How The Olympics Can Help Your Perfectionist Teen Be Happier In School

There is a fine line between success and failure. Just ask Akani Simbine from South Africa.

Who? He was 4th in the Men’s 100m Olympic Final. He missed out on a place on the podium by 0.01 second.

Many young people today are struggling with the concept of success.

This is what drives perfectionism. It has to be amazing or it is awful. It has to be 90%+ in the exam or else it is not good enough.

Last week, I was working with a 16-year old girl. She is a self-proclaimed perfectionist.

She puts herself under a lot of pressure. She liked to be in the 90’s in terms of her grades. She wants top marks.

However she is not getting the grades. In fact her grades severely dipped and she could not face her exams. She told me she feels out of place in school.

In her words ‘I am in a constant state of anxiety.’

She feels panicky in class. She told me she feels her Maths teacher does not like her. She told me she is not coping. In fact she has not been to school in 6 months.

I come across this a lot today. On one hand it would be easy of me to say she lacks resilience. I could say she needs to toughen up. I could give out about the parents and say they need to be harder on her. But this would not work.

This girl’s problems are not just the fact that she sets impeccably high standards for herself. Her problem is society and how we define what is success today.

In an Instagram world average is no longer ‘good enough’. We have to exceptional. We have to be ‘special’.

We now live in a world of extremes. It is all or nothing.

If you are not a millionaire you are broke. If you are not a size 8 you are fat. If you are not a 500+ point kid in the Leaving Cert you are average.

Teens don’t want to be average. Instagram and TikTok do NOT like average.

We are told we can be anything we want. Anything less is not good enough.

This is creating incredibly high expectations in the minds of young people. They are drowning in a sea of mediocrity.

No one wants to be mediocre. Throw in the competitive nature of schools, the points race and the emphasis on achievement, and it is a heady mix of pressure and expectation.

So what can you do as parents to help your teen when you see your teen subject themselves to such high self-scrutiny, heightened self-pressure and difficulty accepting failure and/or average?

Here are some tips:

1. ​Talk about the Olympics and the concept of 4th place – talk about the other athletes who miss out on the finals and how getting to compete in the Olypmics is success
2. Do not talk about yourself and what you did at their age – demonstrate to them in simple terms that hard work, modesty and being ok with average is good enough
3. Talk about the concept of what ‘enough’ looks like and how being told constantly we need ‘more’, do ‘more’ and achieve ‘more’ can actually be harmful.

Helping your teen understand that life is not just about getting 90%+ in their exams or achieving 6-pack abs or earning €100k+ per year.

Life is really about sitting in the banality of being average and being okay with being okay.

By listening, encouraging and embracing concepts such as failure, ordinariness and average we are teaching our young people to manage and cope better with reality.

Life is hard and once we accept that it gets a whole lot easier.

4th place is fine. Sometimes coming 4th could be the best thing to happen to you.

Until next time, keep RAYSING THE GAME!