Page 31 - SB-Polly Perfect

Taking personal responsibility for projects, tasks, grades, relationships, jobs and ourselves is very difficult if you think like Polly Parrot. Failure to get what they want will bring out whining and hateful behaviors in those who think like Polly.
In the “Most Appealing Fruit” contest, the winner found a pineapple. This strange and exotic fruit had fallen off a truck and was in the road. It was not a native fruit to the Parrots’ home range and its uniqueness caused it to be judged the Most Appealing.
Polly pitches a fit and accuses the other parrot of cheating. Her behavior was very bad even by parrot standards and she was told by one of the judges, “What is important is how you play the contest and accept the results and unfortunately, you are not doing a very good job of that.”
We often loose sight of this truth. Childhood sport contests too frequently degenerate into ugly confrontations between adults. The childish, “Things should go the way I want them to go” remains in the thinking of too many adults. Will our children remember how many games they won or the fun they had playing? When adults reinforce this irrational “perfectionistic” thinking, they are robbing their children of the pleasure of competition, from a ball game to a spelling bee.
In the final contest, “Most Appealing Parrot,” Polly seems sure to win. She is easily the prettiest of the parrots in the flock. But she does not win and the award goes to Penny Parrot. Polly complains that Penny is not as pretty and that she should have won.
To her complains, the judge says, “Polly, you may be right that
you are more attractive than Penny. But the contest is for the
Most Appealing". Penny is considerate and helpful. She does what she needs to do to take care of herself but does not mind helping others. She learns her lessons but does not brag about how smart she is. She helps others learn from their mistakes and does not tattle on others. Those are some of the reasons she was voted as the ‘most appealing’ parrot.”
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