Trying Something New Has Never Felt So Good!

Thank you to P&G’s Have You Tried This Yet? program and Kroger for sponsoring my writing about trying new things and breaking out of my everyday routine. Click here to find great savings on high-performing P&G products at a Kroger store near you. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

I’m not exactly a “try something new” kind of person. Truth be told, I’m much like my grandmother who is fully established in her daily routine, and knows exactly what she wants, right down to the way her trash compacter is filled. Stepping “out of the box”…er.. “out of my comfort zone” is not only uncomfortable, but takes a great deal of effort.

Millions of people try new things everyday. Be it skydiving, surfing, trying sushi or starting a blog, it seems easy for those around me to try something new, yet so un-natural for me. It wasn’t until my daughter recently asked me to work in her classroom, that I decided to “step out of my comfort zone” and dive in wholeheartedly to trying something new.

Let me preface my intended good deed with the fact that a classroom filled with 6-year olds isn’t exactly my idea of bliss, nor should it be something that took so much effort, yet it did. Albeit, I’m a very involved parent and my involvement in my daughters education is of the utmost importance to me. I attend the Jog-a-thons, the field trips, the book fairs, and I’ve even….well…thought about attending a parent club meeting. Some things are better left in thought, right? Yet, it was important to my daughter that I took time every week to dedicate just to her and her education.

So I did.

My first attempt visit to the classroom was a jolt of reality. The teacher put me in charge of 18 kids at two different centers that included a listening center and a craft. I manage two little girls on a daily basis and I thought I had this one in the bag, but I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I had one child pulling at my leg, another at my arm, and multiple children looking at me yelling “teacher”! I didn’t know who to answer first, or better yet, how to answer so many children at one time. I was certainly outside of my comfort zone at this point, and my first instinct was to bolt out the door without a single sign of my departure.

Then I looked over at my daughter.

She was quietly working on a craft, and she looked over at me with a smile, a sparkle in her eye, and a look of completely and utter awe. She was admiring me for what I was….her mom. Suddenly, all of the answers came to me and within a matter of minutes, all of the children were quietly working at their assigned stations. The truth is I’m not good at it. Really, not good at it. The crafts end up messy every week, especially when I have to use that paper-cutter-thing (that’s what it’s called, right?). The teacher sometimes looks at me as if I landed from an alien planet. But, I did it. I continue to do it, week after week because she is awesome, and it means the world to her. This will stay with her…forever, and thanks to her, trying something new has never felt so good!