At the age of 15, she became the world ski champion and climbed the ELLE; at the age of 16, she was admitted to the prestigious Stanford school; at the age of 18, she won the gold medal in the freestyle ski women's big jump at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics
More than 20 advertising endorsements have been collected, and the advertising revenue has exceeded 100 million yuan in the past two years
This is Gu Ailing.
Many people will say that she is a talented girl, but I would like to talk more about her personal efforts and the shaping of the family environment, perhaps these are more valuable lessons that we ordinary people can learn from.
Today, from the perspective of career education, I will talk about how to cultivate "Gu Ailing" from home "at low cost" without tens of millions of savings.
Career education, also known as dream education, focuses on the multi-dimensional growth of a person, so that children can face the future, have success that can be controlled by themselves and can define happiness.
First of all, let's first define what is "Gu Ailing", which I call - Gu Ailing Spirit:
Love life, love challenges
Work hard enough with self-discipline
Super autonomy
Optimistic and positive with self-confidence
The pursuit of perfection and perfection
Be grateful for everything around you
Love your family
Dare to express and praise
What I like the most is her determination of her own life: "I have always enjoyed the life I have chosen. ”
Let's define what is meant by "low cost":
Excellent talents must be inseparable from genes, the IQ of famous schools at home, the talent of athletes is her innate advantage, and it is also an indispensable premise for the family to have enough financial resources to support her completion, but a healthy family environment and the correct parenting concept can also allow children to have the above excellent qualities.
If you, who read this article, have not yet raised children, then it is more necessary to adjust your life according to these methods to prepare for the future.
Self-exploration
Self-exploration does not only mean letting children explore, but parents should also be a good example of exploring their own lives.
Gu Ailing's mother is a typical "fun person": "I have loved to play since I was a child, and it is better to teach by example than by example." She loves poetry and chess painting, and she does it herself. ”
Because of this concept of family education, Gu Ailing has liked to explore a variety of different hobbies since she was a child, archery, rock climbing, piano, musicals, athletics... When she chose skiing as her specialty, she said: "Skiing is my own hobby of choice".
Even after being admitted to Stanford, when faced with what majors and careers will be chosen in the future, Gu Ailing also said that he has a lot of directions and hopes to experience more courses and then choose directions.
When you choose, you have the initiative in life.
Back to the present many parents, not to the child's interest as the starting point, but to the parents' expectations as the starting point, so that children must "play chess, calligraphy and painting" must be able to know, at the same time, as parents, their own life lack of interest, but also put all their hopes on the child, at this time, for the child, is a kind of "pressure", rather than finding their own love of the "motivation".
I once communicated with a parent who let her child learn a lot of languages and sports, and most of these studies ended in half a year, because the parent started based on the child's interests, and if he was not interested in such languages, then he gave up, and finally the child chose two languages for long-term learning, one is "English" and the other is "Spanish".
So the exploration is right, but it is easier to capture the child's dynamics in time when exploring, whether it is interested, whether it is good at it, whether it is willing to learn for a long time, and work hard in the right direction.
Many parents will worry that their children want to do this today, tomorrow they want to be that, from the perspective of career development, it is a very normal phenomenon to explore interests and advantages in the early stage, because their understanding of the world is still fragments, and what parents have to do is to continue to extend this fragment to supplement information, knowledge and experience.
Make decisions, please leave it to your child.
At the same time, parents themselves should cultivate their own interests and hobbies, when children see that you are enjoying, they know how to find that feeling of enjoyment.
Gu Ailing said: "Do what you like, have love, then you will not feel tired when practicing." I'm not skiing for the Olympics, I'm not studying for the sake of going to Stanford, I'm doing these things because I have a love for it, because I like to do it, and then start racing by the way, start winning by the way, then let me like it more. ”
Build a support system
1) Set an example
There is a saying that "chicken babies are not as good as chickens themselves", and the biggest impact on babies in the process of growing up is their parents and immediate family members around them.
Regarding the matter of learning, Gu Yan said that it is not mandatory for her to enter a prestigious school, but Gu Ailing herself hopes to enter Stanford, precisely because she herself feels the excellence of the role models around her, so she hopes that she can also be among the ranks.
The greatest motivation comes from one's own "wanting".
Ask today's children how many hope to become their own parents, they show more of a lack of understanding and disapproval of their parents.
The chicken method is not right, and the effort is fully costly.
When you are a chicken child, think about whether you are not confident in your career or dissatisfied with your studies? Do you brush up the vibrato as soon as you go home, and the small drama looks good? This is not responsible for their own future, but will give the child the opposite impact.
In Gu Ailing's family, her grandmother is a very competitive woman, and her mother is a woman who loves learning very much, and the impact of these two points on Gu Ailing is enough to see from her own learning and hobbies.
In education, Gu Yan did not give up her career for her daughter's ideals, and Gu Ailing did not give up her studies for the ideal of sports.
2) Build the system
As a child grows, the most important thing is to build a support system. The support system does not have to be "parent-complete", as long as it can provide the support it needs, it will be a good system. But many families have turned the support system into a suppression system, and the child is not nourished in this growth, but also constantly consumes energy.
Support systems can be divided into the following areas:
environment
sentiment
resource
(1) Environmental support
Gu Ailing mentioned that his secret is to "sleep for 10 hours", which is really a super killer from the perspective of brain development. High-quality sleep can help the brain remember (regulate the intensity and number of neuronal connections), improve concentration, have more positive emotions, and more.
For the health of the brain, it is worth a special article, but here, Gu Ailing's secret has really helped her a lot, whether it is the efficiency of learning, or the sensitivity of exercise, can fully reflect her role in sleeping well.
The second environment is Gu Yan's supportive environment for her hobbies and growth.
She would create an exclusive time for Gu Ailing to ski, driving her back and forth for 8 hours to take her skiing. To support her skiing, she was allowed to teach herself at home to try to pass the exam within 3 years.
Back to many parents, such "support" will create children's "not doing the right thing", so they let their children explore, but they do not have the courage to support to the end, more often, it is actually from their own inner self-confidence, as well as the fear of risk.
(2) Emotional support
If environmental support clears the way for a child's growth, then emotional support is the biggest source of nourishment for a child's growth.
Every time there is a small competition, Grandma is always very encouraging, thinking that Ailing is the "best", "fantastic"; after every ski competition, Mom will always praise "I'm so proud of you, you got this"
"Good boys are boasted" is a cosmic truth that few people can practice. Because they have never felt this kind of "encouragement" since they were young, how can they say it well?
So the essence of educating children - to educate themselves first;
Change the nature of the child - change yourself first;
Achieve the essence of the child - to achieve yourself first.
Emotional support, in addition to praise, is also about providing a stable mood.
After a training, Ai Ling's throat was very uncomfortable and very painful, but Gu Yan was not as nervous as the average mother was like an ant on a hot pot, instantly making the child feel very aggrieved or more anxious, but patiently asked and let her rest first; another training, fell into a concussion, Gu Yan is also more calm, keep talking with Ai Ling.
Gu Yan knows that these injuries and pains are just bumps and bumps on this ski road, and even if she is not by her daughter's side in the future, her daughter still has the courage and ability to face it on her own, and excessive care and tension will only cause anxiety and escape from the child.
In other words, other parents may directly let their children give up because of the first fall.
(3) Resource support
Gu Yan has accumulated a lot of resources on her own life path, such as vision, knowledge, business, etc., which are important resources for Gu Ailing to grow healthily and have an independent consciousness.
Perhaps many parents do not have a strong background like Gu Yan, but they can still use their existing resources to help their children develop cognition.
I have a student whose parents are in business, but not only have they not told their children that their home is a business for more than ten years, but they also do not support the idea of their children going into business. Obviously, there are good family resources to help children grow and realize their dreams, but they only stare at his achievements and question why the children are not working hard enough.
As everyone knows, dreams are the best motivation for learning.
Shape career abilities
Many parents will complain that their children's time management skills are not good, and they procrastinate, they are not focused, they have no motivation to learn, and they hope to start from the "problem" and solve the problem.
But the truth is that all problems are based on initiative.
Gu Ailing's efficient time management, for example, stems from herself: "I am very passionate about what I do, and because of this, I need to find a way to balance other things to make sure I have enough time to be self-disciplined to complete what I have to do." 」 ”
When the child realizes that only by improving his time management ability can he balance the various roles, time management becomes his "own business", and only when he realizes that it is his own business" will there be a real change.
So the first step above is the second step is critical, and the third step is just the icing on the cake.
Children's growing career skills include: goal management, planning, time management, self-awareness, independence, cooperation and so on. The methodological level is not exhaustive, let's focus on a perspective based on all abilities - the career perspective.
1) Inner perspective
Gu Ailing said in an interview: The biggest opponent is himself, do his best, do something he did not expect.
Her opponent is herself, and her aim is to be a better version of herself. So she worked harder than anyone else and was more reluctant to give up.
I don't think of it as "Versailles", but because she realizes that her life is only once, so we have to be more serious and responsible about it.
When parents compare their children with "other people's children", children form an "external perspective" from an early age, and I am better than others / Others are always better than me.
This external perspective invisibly causes a great burden on the growth of children, because looking outward, there are always better and better people, so compared, it will only grow into a child with inferiority.
2) Positive perspective
Positivity comes from dealing with setbacks head-on.
After Gu Ailing was unable to play after a fall, he could only be a commentator. Her heart was unwilling. But soon she adjusted to herself, focusing on the commentary.
Interviewed afterwards, she said: "I just fell my head, I can't ski for a month at most, this is not a big competition, it is a World Cup competition, and there are many World Cup matches, and it is useless to regret it, because it has passed, it has happened, so you can only think about what to do next or what to do now, how happy you are now." ”
Adjusting the perspective to the present in time, not immersing in the emotion of remorse, and being able to actively cope with sudden changes and setbacks is an important ability to face a highly uncertain society in the future.
Many parents are afraid that their children will fall, touch, and fear that they will take a detour, so they are carefully protected, and these children who have not experienced setbacks in childhood will only be more ignorant of timely adjustments, and even paranoid and fall into their own failures and chagrins.
In addition, there are many perspectives, such as the perspective of the future, the perspective of openness, the specific perspective, etc., which are not repeated in length.
Above, you will find that raising a "Gu Ailing" type of child is more of a requirement for parents themselves.
At the beginning, I said that this is "low cost", but in fact, "changing your original cognition and habits as a parent" is the highest cost.
Some people may say that Gu Ailing is Gu Yan's business choice, but in fact, think about it, which child is not the biggest "investment" of parents; it is not difficult to see that In the documentary, Gu Yan is intentionally guiding Gu Ailing's patriotic feelings, but which parent is not instilling their concepts when educating their children, so that children and your cognition are unified, even above you, is not also the goal of parents' painstaking management, on the contrary, it is a more regrettable phenomenon for children to blindly sing the opposite tune and turn against each other. So, just look at it rationally.