Wisdom-that came with a price. Life is only to succeed

We go through phases in life-as a child, as an adult in work force, as an employer or employee and as a husband or wife in a relationship-Three Stages to make one’s life meaningful.

As a child with ADD,I was ridiculed, laughed at, put down, experienced some corporal punishments but survived and tasted success, not in a continuum, but nevertheless kept aiming for the mountain top. My grades reflected the return of being accepted or not. Whether it was in school where friends had the common denominator of similar life experiences, or your parents who praised or put down because you did or didn’t achieve their dream or those who joined the bandwagon by making comparisons which the whole world did during my growing pains or to put it mildly, my growing period of being a kid and an adolescent, where grades mattered and not the input, when the freedom to express yourself was stymied because your two cents, if anyone cared to listen, was reflected based on your academic performance, anyone’s born free attitude was brought to a screeching halt because they were judged at a prime age where encouragement of child’s extra curricular activities, was a direct reflection of his or her performance in the capacity to master textual knowledge, when a parent could feel proud or disappointed by the grades on his or her progress report- those were hard times for me.

I look back and wonder how things could have changed had I been encouraged, told that I was not a disappointment but still gave the appreciation for the process, the time I put in to get where I did and that I was “Not Yet There”, but to keep digging until I found my pasture, as A.J. Cronin aptly put it. How life would have been different if my positive points were magnified and appreciated to follow my dream but also was reminded to keep in focus that in order to achieve my dream, it would help vastly to put in the best efforts in academics to get to the mountain top(still it could be not to one’s liking), but like I said earlier, at least closer to the mountain top as the words of hope would have driven me than accept defeat even without attempting.

Studies show that a fixed mindset results in no activity of the brain and a growth mindset creates the ability to develop. So it is best to praise the process than just the intelligence.

I have a son and a daughter whom I love very dearly. Having experienced and emotionally been on a roller coaster, I decided to use my experience to change the tide. I did not shout at their mistakes, did not use time outs, did not raise my hand however disappointing I felt. I did not ground them but always tried to encourage them and when things went bad, to hope for a better tomorrow, when grades didn’t reflect their actual potential, I told them that they could do it and that they were not far from what they could achieve and that life is a learning process and not defined by the moment of time.

My son and daughter in their High School years achieved a lot more than my expectations. They were not class first but were honor roll students, did not get cups or shields in plenty but in the process bettered themselves in sports and other extra curricular activities.

My son played American football and Tennis in High School and swam for YMCA team during his middle school years and learned to play the keyboard which he didn’t try to master. In College, during his BS in Electrical Engineering, he soon realized that it was not something he wanted to pursue and after two years out of four, came up to me and said he wanted to switch to BS in Management. With some prodding, he switched to BS in the field of Management in Manufacturing Engineering. For six months after graduation, with nothing to show for as he couldn’t get a job during the recession, he heard my plea( however restrained, it was still a plea) to apply for MBA. And then his life turned around. With his mother’s discipline embedded in his genes and my never say die attitude, he went on to get his MBA and MPD(Master’s in Product Development). He worked two jobs in between his Masters’ degrees before he accepted his job offer from Apple as a Product Manager. He is 28, now, but was 27 when he got the job offer from Apple. He overcame his fear of not being able to achieve to will and try and then to succeed by participating and completing and not worrying about the outcome. He took part in activities that needed a lot of endurance, Triathlon, Chicago Marathon, to name a few. He works out every day.

My daughter is multi talented. You could see in her growing years. She could sing, learn to play any instrument, had the gift of the gab and was in the young authors club in her middle school years but lo and behold, she also had to live with my gene that carried ADD. I remember in her middle school years when I went to her school Principal’s office to hand over her homework which she did but forgot to take with her , at least a hundred times in one particular year, that her Principal commented that I was more regular than the teacher’s and she had to find a way to employ me!. She played volleyball for school, swam for YMCA team, was a VP in the Student’s Council for all four years in HS, was a honor roll student but never the top ten in her class. She learned to play the keyboard, violin, drums and played for the school band. She has a voice that can sing and the outcome is melodious. She never tried to master any as she lost interest but stuck to her school band all four years during her HS years. She went to India after HS to do Med School but came back after less than a year and finished her BS in Psychology. She decided to work and not pursue higher studies to my disappointment. But she proved that I was wrong. She chose to work in sales for a National car rental company and within a year, has won many accolades and has become the number one Sales Executive among 150 others covering half of my State of Illinois. She is very independent, driven, loving, caring, empathetic, stands up for her rights and has the confidence I didn’t have when I was my kids’ age.

I believe by encouraging the process and not the intelligence, by developing a growth mind set and not a fixed mind set, always finding a silver lining and never discouraging, helped my kids to overcome the tyranny of now which made kids cheat, to always look for others who were lesser than them in potentials and move forward by appreciating others and accepting their God Given Gift which helped them, however long it took, to gain Clarity and solve the Mystery.