Teach Children to Grow, Not Succeed: Rethinking What Success Really Means

When Ambition Meets Real Life

If you had told me a year ago that I would become a gym regular, someone who actually plans her week around strength training, I would have laughed and gone back to convincing myself that walking the dog counted as exercise. And yet here I am, proudly calling myself a gym addict, with an ambitious goal of strength training five days a week and a far more realistic outcome of usually landing at four, which I genuinely feel proud of.

I have always been someone who carries very precise visions of success. My family has learned to recognize this about me, the way I tend to picture the finished version long before I allow space for the learning curve. I am naturally drawn to going all in, even when easing in might make more sense. Unsurprisingly, the gym has become the perfect place for this mindset to show up and gently challenge it.

My Definition of Success Walked Into the Gym

I adore my coach, Miguel Ortiz, not just because he knows exactly what he is doing, but because he is living, breathing evidence of discipline, with a body that reflects years of consistency and control. Watching him demonstrate an exercise often feels almost unfair, because he makes even the hardest movements look effortless, clean, and calm, and somewhere along the way my goal quietly became to be as strong as him, because in my mind, that level of strength, mastery, and control was what success looked like.

Every time he demonstrated an exercise, I found myself smiling, not out of confidence, but out of pure awe at how easily his body responded to something that demanded so much effort from mine. I would load the weights, attempt half of what he lifted, and still find myself negotiating with my arms just to finish the set, aware of the growing gap between where I was and where I thought I should already be. One day he noticed the smile and asked what I was thinking, and without pausing to soften the answer, I told him that I felt weak, a feeling that came as much from a quiet helplessness as from effort, from watching how ineffective my desire to become strong felt in the face of how far I still had to go, especially when I measured success against such a clearly defined standard.

The Moment That Changed How I See Success

A few days later, another gym instructor joined our class, not as a coach, but as a participant like the rest of us, except this instructor casually picked up eighty pound dumbbells in each hand and dropped into split squats as though it were routine. I noticed the quiet exchange between the two instructors, the kind that needed no words, and then watched as my coach decided to try it too. He completed the split squats, finished the set, and when he set the weights down, he was audibly winded.

Then he laughed and said, “I feel so weak.”

If Everyone Feels Weak, What Is Success Really

That moment stayed with me long after the workout ended. If my coach, someone I see as the very definition of strength and success, can feel weak in the presence of someone stronger, then what exactly are we chasing when we say we want to be successful, and when we say we want our children to be successful?

Is success a rigid picture we create in our minds and refuse to revise? A finish line that must be crossed exactly as imagined? Or is success something far more grounded, built through daily effort, consistency, and growth?

Showing up four days instead of five and still returning the following week. Wanting to exercise consistently and making space for it in a busy life. Eating well most days and not quitting when perfection slips. Getting stronger not by comparison, but by commitment.

The Definition of Success We Rarely Teach Children to Grow Into

As parents, we often unintentionally teach our children that success is about outcomes, grades, trophies, and visible proof that they have arrived. What if we focused on growth over outcomes instead? What if, instead of measuring success, we learned to notice growth, effort, persistence, and progress?

When we focus only on outcomes, we miss the deeper opportunity to help children focus on growth, and that shift matters more than we often realize.

Growth teaches humility and perseverance, and shows children how to keep going even when someone else seems stronger, faster, or further ahead.

Teach Growth, Not Just Success

Struggling does not mean failing. More often than not, it means you are stretching beyond what is familiar. When children learn that growth is the goal, they are far less likely to quit the moment they feel behind.

Success, when defined too narrowly, can make kids stop trying. Growth teaches them to stay in the game, to keep showing up, and to trust that progress is happening even when it is not immediately visible.

And that, far more than any perfectly imagined finish line, is the lesson I want my students to carry with them, long after the gym, the grades, and the trophies fade away.