Wise Words

23 Motivational Quotes Help Kids Push Through Challenges

Making your kid's life easier is nowhere near as important as teaching them how to stay motivated when things get hard.

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It’s always important to keep perspective and see the positive sides of a situation. But it’s just as important to embrace life’s obstacles — to lean into them and learn from them. As parents, we try to make our kids’ lives easier, but it also becomes clear pretty fast that preparing them for hardship and teaching them how to cultivate motivation to push through difficult times is even more important. Sometimes life sucks, and that’s okay. One way to help them learn this without bringing them down is to focus on the getting-through-it part, on staying motivated through struggle, and the reward that can come from a rough slog. These motivational quotes for kids from powerful thinkers (and parents) such as Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Atul Gawande are a good way to keep your children motivated, moving forward and pushing through whatever comes their way.

  1. “Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try.” —Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal
  2. “Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.” —Michelle Obama
  3. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” —Mark Twain
  4. “Nothing that’s worth anything is easy.” —Barack Obama
  5. “Trying to do it all and expecting it all can be done exactly right is a recipe for disappointment. Perfection is the enemy.” —Sheryl Sandberg
  6. “If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.” —Tom Hanks
  7. “Everybody has talent, it’s just a matter of moving around until you’ve discovered what it is.” —George Lucas
  8. “If you care about what you do and work hard at it, there isn’t anything you can’t do if you want to.” —Jim Henson
  9. “Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” —Ruth Bader Ginsberg
  10. “Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination.” —Mae Jemison
  11. “The best way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” —Walt Disney
  12. “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” —Henry Ford
  13. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” —Thomas Edison
  14. “Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.” —Lance Armstrong
  15. “You never fail until you stop trying.” —Albert Einstein
  16. “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” —Confucius
  17. “Dig deep to finish what you start. Because no matter how hard it feels to push through adversity at the time, once you’re done, you’ll own the experience for the rest of your life.”― Aaron Lauritsen
  18. “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, only this time more wisely.” — Henry Ford
  19. “It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.” ― J.K. Rowling
  20. “Good words are worth much, and cost little.” ― George Herbert
  21. “Dream big and dare to fail.” — Norman Vaughan
  22. “Success is when preparation meets opportunity.” — Zig Ziglar
  23. "Nothing is impossible. The word itself says 'I'm possible!'"— Audrey Hepburn

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