We had our back-to-school dinner the at the beginning of the month. Panda express has been on our menu for the last couple years and no one is complaining about it!
Just this summer I was reading Atomic Habits by James Clear and then I found myself reading a general conference talk by Elder Dunn titled “One Percent Better” where he quotes James Clear. It became very obvious what I wanted our kids to focus on as they started a new school year.
Elder Dunn states, “Well, acclaimed author James Clear says this strategy puts the math squarely in our favor. He maintains that “habits are the ‘compound interest of self-improvement.’ If you can get just one percent better at something each day, by the end of a year … you will be 37 times better.”
He also goes on to say, “Every effort to change we make—no matter how tiny it seems to us—just might make the biggest difference in our lives.”
So we challenged the kids to make small changes to better their lives and more specifically their school year. Each kid came up with their own idea of what they could work to become 1 percent better in. I know I had my own laundry list of things I could strive to be just a little bit better in. Some days I fall short. And some days I get just a little bit better.
It’s the working at it that is so valuable and what I want my kids to learn. 1 percent better seems far more attainable than large lofty goals. Just 1 percent.
