Why didn’t they teach us what is the right way…
Most of us dealt with parents who wanted more for us that they ever had, but at the same time they had a “poor” mindset, a mentality of contentment.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s ok and we must be thankful for what we have in our life in the present, but we should always aim for higher goals if we want to progress in life.
The main problem is that our parents had an easier life in many aspects. Quite a lot had the chance to work for the same company all their life with a good pension and benefits. The cost of living was lower and more balanced with their incomes and stress was much lower than today.
So they developed a tendency to complacency. I often hear: “Look at worse than you” – “Be satisfied with what you have” – “Do not aim too high to avoid disappointment”.
No wonder why we live in a society of living-dead waiting all day to go home and watch their reality shows.
In my case, at least, I had the chance to have a mother who always told me: “Look at better than you if you wanna learn” – “Stay with dumb people and you’ll become like them, go with smart ones and you’ll become smarter”
On my wife side, her mother still tells her to be satisfied with what she has because there is worse. When she’s saying that, my wife jumps on the occasion to correct her and tells her she don’t want to be satisfied, she wants more out of life, she wants to grow, learn and always be a better person.
The funniest thing is that her mother agrees with her replies, but she’s coming back with her “satisfied thing” on a regular base as if she’s forgetting what her daughter told her. No, she doesn’t have Alzheimer!
She has a lifetime of “bad programming” and it’s now almost impossible to “reprogram” her thinking.
We were told to get good grades in school so that we could go to a good college and use that degree to find a good job and climb the corporate ladder. This was and still is a good plan if you get in a career offering you change and improvement, not just doing the same thing all your life as a robot.
The general process of what you’ll do in life goes like this; when you were young, you discovered hobbies you liked (doing some mechanic with your dad), you decided to go to school and learn about that and you got a job in that field.
That’s what we were “program” to do, because everybody’s doing it.
The problem is; we must then adjust our lifestyle around this career field. Our schedule, income, even friendships are now dependent of this career.
“Our job is now defining us”.
The most important thing in your life is now your career, and the rest comes in second… That’s so wrong!
The equation must be inverted to be right.
You should define what kind of life you want, learn what you’ll have to do to have it from those who succeeded and go do what it takes to reach your goals.
You must work to get the life you really want and not only live to work or survive.
I frequently come across this quote; “We grow or we rot.”
There is no neutral in life; everything we do in life will make us going up or down. There is an outstanding book called “The Slight Edge” explaining this.
We must stop listening to the old ways of thinking and learn the ways of the information age we are now in.
Information is the fuel that will get you anywhere you want to be.
So why our parents did not teach us what is the right way?
They simply didn’t know what they didn’t know.
We can not blame them for something they didn’t know. They taught us what they thought was the right way.
Thanks for reading, Patric J. Dufficy
Posted: January 17th, 2012 under Leadership, LIFE.
Tags: better, complacency, contentment, hope, parents, satisfied, society, worse
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