You are either getting better or getting worse. Growing or dying.

You cannot stay the same!

Great analogy I used with my twelve year old tonight:

In your early grades you were learning addition and subtraction. You had to work really hard at memorizing the facts: 2+2=4, 2+5=7 and so on. You worked really, really hard to learn them 100% accurately and instant answer. Yeah! You’re now the best in your class, even your whole grade! Very cool!

Now when the teacher started to introduce multiplication suddenly you were not quick and made a lot of mistakes. You got discouraged and realized you could still just add and get the same answer – accurately all the time.

So you refused to ever learn multiplication (and got away with that somehow!). Every else learned and mastered multiplication.

Now here’s the key: When asked questions like this on a timed test who’s going to get better result?
How many blocks are there when there’s seven rows of six blocks each?

You (the star addition kid) will do 6+6=12, 12+6=18… But everyone that continued to grow and learn would do 6×7=42 and get a better result than you.

So did you change? No, you are still the quickest and 100% accurate at addition. But what changed? The process of figuring out how many blocks are there when there’s seven roads of six blocks?

The technique changed and improved the results for answering the question.

Your situation is always changing. So even if you’re not being the one to move, you are still moving. And you’re either getting closer or farther.

Getting worse or getting better. Always feel better.