Take Messy Action

EP170: Prepare to shift your perspective on homeschooling as we uncover the liberating truth behind embracing the chaos. We'll journey through the necessity of 'messy action' and discover that the search for perfection often leads to inaction. With three decades in education under my belt, I've witnessed countless parents frozen by the desire to get it just right. This episode peels back the layers of that paralysis, revealing that a willingness to start small, accept failure, and understand that change is a slow dance is the key to homeschooling success.

Find the Show Notes Here (www.artofhomeschooling.com/episode170)

Inspired at Home Membership (www.artofhomeschooling.com/inspiredathome)

Transcript

Jean: 0:09

You're listening to the Art of Homeschooling podcast, where we help parents cultivate creativity and connection at home. I'm your host, jean Miller, and here on this podcast you'll find stories and inspiration to bring you the confidence you need to make homeschooling work for your family. Let's begin. Hey there, homeschooling friend, and welcome to this episode all about acknowledging the messiness of the homeschool life. Today, I'm here to encourage you to take messy action. Here's what I've come to realize in my over 30 years in education, as parents and as teachers, we all have to be willing to take imperfect action. Just buying a curriculum and reading about what to do is not going to change your homeschool or help your children learn. We need to take action and we need to be willing to take imperfect action messy action, because I often say it's the doing that counts. This episode is inspired by my own experience, which I now know after talking to hundreds, maybe thousands of homeschooling parents is quite common. Here's how it went for me Starting on in my homeschooling journey. I felt like I was on an emotional roller coaster. I would try singing songs for circle time and leading my kiddos in a clapping rhyme, but then my two boys would end up in a puddle rolling around wrestling on the floor and I would give up. That happened over and over and over again. But here's the thing change takes time. Learning something new takes time. We're going to say time takes time.

Jean: 2:14

I want to encourage you to make homeschooling as easy as possible so that you follow through and keep at it. That's the only way to experience success and that's why I focus so much on simplicity. I learned this the hard way. Believe me, I am an overcomplicator for sure. Over and over again, this sabotaged my homeschooling. I would make elaborate plans, try them out, but give up too soon. Switch gears, buy a new curriculum, thinking that was the answer, when really the answer was right in front of me all along. Start small and build up to full homeschooling days one little bit at a time, but we do have to start. As Mark Twain said and this is a quote the secret to getting ahead is getting started. When we overcomplicate, we give up or just don't even start at all. When we think we have to have it all figured out before we begin, we just never get started. The truth is, we have to be willing to be awkward right and make a mess in order to get any better at all, and this applies to homeschooling as much as anything else. That's why I created the inspired at home community. I wanted to offer training, coaching and community all in one place so that homeschoolers like you can learn as you go, because this is a process.

Jean: 3:54

We need to try something, iterate, try again and, most of all, we need to be willing to fail, to have things be messy a lot of the time. As Samuel Beckett said, ever tried, ever failed, no matter, try again, fail again, fail better. The biggest barrier to being consistent is not being willing to make mistakes and keep going. We don't need big, elaborate plans that actually can hinder us from moving forward. We need mostly a willingness to take messy action. So today I invite you to accept this homeschooling life as messy and imperfect, with lots of failures, which really means lots of opportunities to learn.

Jean: 4:54

We think we just need that light bulb moment of inspiration and then we're going to be able to change quickly, like once we decide to homeschool or bring more hands on learning. We think that suddenly we'll understand what we need to do and change will be quick and easy. But just because we have that knowledge doesn't mean change is quick and easy. It doesn't actually go that way. Change takes time. Believe me when I tell you there will be lots and lots of failure and you might not even notice the change or that things are working or that your child is learning, until all of a sudden the changes start to compound and then change seems to happen suddenly. But change is never sudden.

Jean: 5:47

James Clear talks a lot about this in his book Atomic Habits. I'm reading this book right now. It's great. We need to hang in there until the change becomes visible. That is one of the most important messages I'm getting from this book. I'll say that again we need to hang in there until the change becomes visible. So give yourself some grace and be realistic.

Jean: 6:14

Reading one book or watching one video is not going to change things overnight. The only thing that changes you is long-term action, being consistent. So do whatever it takes to take messy, imperfect action. Remember it's progress over perfection, because if we can make progress, change happens gradually over time. Successful people try and they fail lots and lots and lots of times. But they're not derailed by failure because they expect it. They anticipate it and realize it's part of the change process. The key is to embrace failure as part of the journey itself. Learn from it and use it to continue on. Use it to learn what works and what doesn't, and you're more likely to make quicker and more consistent progress. As Albert Einstein said, failure is success in progress. And another mantra I have found so very helpful over the years is this there is no such thing as failure, only feedback. Perfectionism will hold more people back than anything else.

Jean: 7:42

If you find you struggle with perfectionism, go have a listen to episode 164 here on the podcast called the Spectrum of Perfectionism. I hope this episode here has encouraged you to take messy action. I'll leave you with one more quote to write in your planner or put on a post-it note. In plain sight, walt Disney said everyone falls down. Getting up is how you learn to walk. Wishing you the very best on your homeschooling journey, and let me know how I can help, you can find the show notes for this episode at artofhomeschoolingcom slash episode 170. That's all for today, my friend, but here's what I want you to remember Rather than perfection, let's focus on connection. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you on the next episode of the Art of Homeschooling podcast, schemehomeschoolingcom.