My son, Drake, who is 6, went on a hike with me this weekend.

As we were bushwacking our way through thick vegetation two to three times as tall as him he…

– Was having fun until I gave him a lesson on watching for wild animals resting in the thicket.

– Was walking steadily along until we had to break our way through a tangled mess of pointy thorny intertwined branches.

– Was strong and brave until we started seeing wolf tracks.

Then he started to…

– Huddle closer to me and not let go of my hand as we walked through the scary parts.

– Question himself as to whether he was having fun or not as his legs were scraped up from the branches and the horse flies tried to nip at his skin.

– Want to head back without finishing the adventure.

This allowed him to…

– Seek support and encouragement in a difficult, challenging, and scary situation.  (Most people are scared of wolves in the wild and if you saw paw prints the size of your hand and heard howling you would likely be in the same boat.)

– Push through his limiting beliefs of what he could do and find a way through the tough parts.

–  Continue on even though he was scared showing true bravery and courage.

At one point we had a fork in the road and either route would have taken us where we wanted to end up so I asked him which way we should go.

He said, “We can either take the shorter tougher route or we can take the longer easier route.  Sometimes the shorter tougher route is better and sometimes the longer easier route is, but they both will get us where we are going.  Let’s take the longer easier way today.”

And so it is in life as well.


Brett “Longer Easier or Shorter Harder” Denton