Once I went fishing with my six-year-old nephew (Ilya). I gave him a small spinning rod and a spoon for catching pike. Throwing a spinning rod is not an easy science, you need to learn it. Therefore, it is clear that Ilya had a lot of problems casting the spoon. More often than not, she either remained on the shore, or fell at her very feet, or the fishing line became very tangled. Ilya was angry, cursing, and was ready to give up everything. I was also angry (because I didn’t want to be distracted by him), but still I came up over and over again, explained what he was doing wrong, how to cast the tackle better, how to hold the spinning rod correctly, grab the fishing line, and swing. Over time, things started to work out a little, especially when Ilya did everything as I told him. The anger became less because I understood that everything works out when you follow the instructions. Ilya returned from fishing happy, boasting to his mother that he had learned to throw a spoon into the river. There are other reactions from adults to situations when a child doesn’t succeed in something. For example, they simply say: “You’re doing it wrong, that’s why it doesn’t work!” but they don’t suggest, they don’t jointly look for options on how to do it better – more correctly. It happens that someone doesn’t react at all - they say, let him study on his own, look for ways, no one bothered or coddled me like that. It also happens that an adult does not have time to figure it out (because an explanation alone will not be enough, and fiddling around for a long time, teaching new things, there is no patience and desire), so it’s easier to brush it off, saying something like: “You’re still too young to do this,” “Look for someone “I don’t have time for anyone to help you,” “It’s too early for you to think about such things, you’d better go and play with the boys in the yard.” Another common option is to dump internal negativity on the child, clumsily criticize: “Well, don’t go there anymore, since you don’t know how,” “If God didn’t give you the strength, why did you get into a fight, you’re weak from birth, it’s better to stay at home,” “ You, like your father, have hands that grow out of the wrong place; whatever you grab, you’ll break them right away,” “What a fool you are with crooked hands, well, who asked you to pick up a hacksaw, if you don’t know how, don’t take it.” .When a child is faced with the fact that something is not working out for him, he looks for an explanation for this. If parents help understand the reasons and what needs to be done to make it work next time, then the child has an understanding of why it happened and what to do next. If adults do not help understand and cope with the feelings of failure, then sometimes the child himself finds , how to still implement your plans. And sometimes he simply comes up with an explanation for himself why something cannot be done (there is no point, it is useless to try). First of all, so that the situation becomes clearer, and therefore ceases to be painful. But since one’s own life experience is extremely small, the explanation of the reasons for one’s failures usually comes out naive and primitive. For example, I can’t do it because I: – small (and this is forever); – weak from birth (and cannot become strong); – he’s just like his father – he’s just as crooked (and that can’t be fixed); – I didn’t show my face (and it’s useless to hope to become beautiful); – I’m always meddling where I shouldn’t (the reason for failure is my activity, I need to freeze myself); – you don’t have to do what you don’t know how to do (until you are 100% sure that it will work out, you shouldn’t start); - I don’t do what adults say (and if I do it myself, there will be failures). Such explanations over time can become entrenched in the form of stable internal “decisions” regarding one’s abilities. They become a kind of Alibi (as Adler wrote), which explain not only the reasons for our failures, but also why we should not start doing anything at all. Then we live with such Alibis (one person can have several of them), and with their help we explain to ourselves why something doesn’t work out for us, why something isn’t worth taking on, what am I capable of in general. If you don’t believe in yourself, in the ability to do something worthwhile, important to you - look - how you explain to yourself the reasons for your various failures, how.