The issue with Asian parents is that many people have too many issues about them. Before I talk further, let’s make it clear that I’m not saying that western and other region of parent have less or no issue at all. I believe all type of parents have own sets of matter to talk about but as Asians, we all live under the general perspective of Asian parent’s mindset and we will, either doing it or going to be, live and practice our life as Asian parent to tutor and mold the perspective of next generation.
Perhaps talk about the main purpose why I want to start this topic. You see, many Asians are successful when comes to old age. Success in our mindset does not always referring to wealthy and famous, but Asian’s mindset has a set of guideline to do to
make yourself think that you are successful. This is good, although it’s sort of like hypnotism that possess you for life. But in order to do that, you have to live in pain.
We are generally convinced that to achieve success, we must go through suffering and pain, but we MUST achieve success. It’s totally different from putting extra effort and time to achieve more. By all means if restless night and working when we are sick able to ensure continuous productivity, that is what we have to do. As long as we have sufficient money and able to take up loan to contribute to car and house, and continue our career. We will eventually be convinced that we are successful at a certain degree.
To argue about this mindset is out of the question because our grandparent gone through the world war time when starvation and lack of job is a common symptom in life. When the war time is over, our grandparent focus to ensure our parent able to obtain education and get a good job and life, and try their best, even if it’s mean the harsh way, to make our parent understand the importance of success that eventually lead to good life, and never ever go through the suffering life like war time.
This mindset is generally agreed and practiced in our parent’s generation but for our generation, we are exposed to wide range of options and worlds that telling us that we don’t need to be successful and the most important thing in life is happiness. The conflicts occurred when we grew up with the perspective of our parent (need to be successful, need to go through pain, etc) and as we became adult, we learnt that actually the world is quite different with Asian perspective that we had been taught. That is when, the older we are, the more we have things that disagree with the Asian perspective.
The bigger issue results in the individual that are taught in an Asian way. Because the main idea of Asian mindset of a person growth does not involve much about happiness. We are convinced that we need to be fierce, cruel, strong and etc in order to face this world and create your own path of success. But this idea is just a mask, we wear it because our culture say that we have to. In the inner side of our personality, we somehow built a strong resistant to it even if we follow the ideal without questioning much. And that results in negative impacts such as low confident, insecure, self-denied and etc, because we frequently have conflicts between things we think should be done, and things that telling us that we have to follow without questioning.
Regardless if we are comfortable with how we are living right now, the undeniable fact is that the world is changing. People in the modern city no longer need to live to be competent, afraid of starvation and have to go through hardship in order to live. We are given more options by the outside world as of how we want to live and what we want to do. We can also involve ourself in volunteer and working for NGO that contradict with the definition of success in Asian’s perspective but that’s how we see life should be.
You might want to be the same as how typical Asian thinking is, but we don’t need the next generation to be the same type as how we are: focusing on career to ensure success, live with pain and suffering to achieve what we want, think that if we don’t achieve success means we are nothing, and so on.
This is why the following advice is mainly for our generation who are going to be, or is currently, parent that responsible to guide and shape the mindset of our next generation.
1. Encourage Hope and Belief
This world is cruel. There are a lot of tragedies that we see but we can’t do anything about it. There are all sort of disasters and human-created injustice happen time to time and all we could do is just think about it and hope that we will not fall into the tragic fate. In the end of the day, what we are able to do when we think of it is just a mere thoughts. We usually don’t think too much about it, forget about it and move on with our life.
But our thinking is just stopping people from growing and allow tragedy to happen continuously. We even convince ourself and people that we should not do anything about it. The good thing is, we can avoid ourself and people to face any tragedy and risk their life for something that might not bear any fruit at all; but the impact is, more and more people is not willing to do anything because they are convinced that since most people are not doing anything about it, tragic is always tragic when it happens but actually that’s not the case.
There are many ways to stop tragedy from happening without us realizing it, especially when we are leading a better life compare to many people in this world. Many people around the world are doing it. It might seems insignificant but if you look up to the latest news around the world, there are activities that changing the world slowly and becoming better. Because people have hope, and they have solid belief that changes are possible and the world can be much better instead of just sit back and let the world change by itself. And they are able to see the belief in actual
We are lacking of this power, unless we change how we think about the world and our capability. If we are too possess with our usual living, and many people around us need us to continue what we suppose to do, we can entrust the importance of hope and belief to next generation. At least, teach them to think that people are capable of changes, this world is not hopeless, they can build and use their power to enrich themselves, the people, and the world. Let them know there are unlimited possibilities that they can depend on.
2. Success and Achievements are small step at a time
Success will always be part of our desire, and it’s not just for Asians but for the whole world. This is something that is practiced globally regardless of races and nations. But what I want to emphasize is the perception when we look at success.
Most of us think that success is one big thing. It’s like we got it means we got it all. But when we are asked to defined what is success, or what type of success we want, it can take years for a person to identify the type of success they want.
Especially for Asian mindset, success is always set as later stage like you gotta be at least 40 or 50 to talk about it. The problem is, before that age of success, people are considered as inexperience and immature, because they are not at that stage, yet.
This is not true at all,
age should never define success and maturity, it’s defined by your knowledge and what you capable of. Furthermore, this world has multiple millionaires at the age of 30 and before. If that doesn’t consider successful, what would?
This is why, we should not persuade people to think that success is one big thing. Before you achieve it, you are nothing. It’s a long road, and you need to have the courage to walk on it. Even before you reach the destination, walking on the road ensure you are on progress. Without the final success, you are building your capability and skill, you are definitely something once you started walking on the road.
3. Dare to ask Why and Know Why to ask
When you question an Asian “Why” on a certain subjects that they used to do it on regular basis, you can get a lot of interesting reply and reaction from them. Frequently, if you notice, when you question why they would think like that and what’s the reason behind their behavior, sometimes you can see that they would stunned for awhile and need some time to think before answering your question. The issue with Asian perspective is that we always follow. There are times when we know why, but most of the times we don’t know or unsure about it. We follow because our culture asked us to do so. While we can reason that we are right because the culture and mindset usually has nothing wrong. We are just doing what others think are right.
The problem with this approach is that we do not truly understand why we suppose to do something. The mindset of Asian told us that we need to get promotion in our current job position. If you ask your friend who is working at a higher position in a company, try to ask why they need to get into that position. It’s quite often that you will get answer that is not related to his/her own will. In other words, he did not choose to get into this position at his/her own will. He/she do so because he/she has to.
This can ensure walking on a solid path because you are doing what other’s had proven to be right. The only problem is you didn’t give yourself a chance to think in another perspective and ask yourself “Why”. Why you have to achieve a higher position? Why you want to own a bigger, better properties? Why you want to practice this type thinking? Not only start to question yourself with “Why”, you need to think what’s wrong with the opposite site, as in so what if you did not get into a high job position, own bigger & better properties and so on.
Many people did not realize, asking “Why” is the way to open up a new path and solution. Because we dare to imagine and look into alternate idea, whereas many people don’t do that because they want to stay in a comfort zone. Teach your child to be curious and identify the true reason of anything they encounter, encourage them to think what could be wrong with current approach and grant the capability to identify the right path and create solution for the most ideal approach that we did not think of.
4. Being successful is not a result, it’s a mindset
As an Asian, we frequently talk about how successful other people is based on the type of results that they had achieved. For instance, we like to talk about how someone attended a business meeting that only people with specific qualification and position will be invited. We envy their qualification and position, we wish to have the same type of qualification and position they are in. This, somehow, create another problem.
Many people, not just Asian, think that successful is a result. The problems occur when we want to show people what we are capable of. This apply to us who want to purchase larger and better properties so that people would know that we are capable of this. And also visiting restaurants and food places that are considered expensive because we could afford that, and our inner conscious want to disguise ourself to be somebody who can afford all these luxuries compare to those who can’t. When you post on Facebook and people know that you visited some expensive restaurants, they envy of you and think you are doing really well, and you are quite satisfying because what other people think convince you that you are good and getting closer to success.
But unfortunately, you are not as successful as how others think you are. You are just obsess with the general
Facebook Image Crafting, a concept where you create a great impression by using the best and greatest event in your life with the mask of internet to let others know you are doing excellently. If you take a good look in your actual life, how much financial burden you need to deal with time to time with such spending?
Rather than depending on result to beg people to think that you have an excellent life, teach the next generation to think that you need true mindset that want actual success that determine by everything you do, you can do excellent work and produce good result. Not just excellent by materials and surface, but incapable of dealing with the after-impact.
5.Motivation and Inspiration > Pain and Suffering
Delivering pain and suffering so that people would listen and follow what you want is one of the concept during war, but is totally cruel and the main impact that carve into people’s heart is not the message that you want to pass them, is the actual pain towards their body and mind that develop throughout their entire life.
Even at modern days, there are still parents, which including young adults, believe that canning and causing pain and fear to their children is an effective way to teach and discipline them.
Result wise, yes we can achieve the desired result that we want using canning, scolding, and whichever way to make them follow what we want. But in the end of the day, it’s highly likely that they would learn that they have to do something because if they don’t they will have to experience pain and suffering, but do not understand the true reason to do something.
Think in the future when your children grew up and became parent of their own child, do you want them to cause fear and pain to their own children so that their children should just do things because of fear? Don’t you think it’s a better idea for them to learn how to teach their children and influence others to know how to do things for good reasons?
6. Stop Following Other People’s Footstep
If you have Asian parent, it wouldn’t be weird when they often saying things like: “You see XXXX, they are so good at XXXX. You should be like them!”. As the common perception of Asian often involve following, we are always expected to just follow the path that most people walked on to ensure that you can achieve a good result. Why? Because someone else follow the path and they did it! So following the same path means definitely will become successful like them right? WRONG! Who says that following people path definitely achieve good result?
I’m still unsure on the source of this belief, but I have to be firm on this: Nope, following other people footstep just means you are following, not achieving. Imagine this, when you follow other people footstep, where would your eyes concentrate in order to follow their path? It’s the footstep, which means you are staring at the floor all the time. But how do you ensure what lies ahead? I often got frustrated when I ask people why they want to do something and they answer something like “Because other’s doing that!”.
Stop following other people’s footstep is not the same as stop walking on the path that people had walked on and they consider that as path of success. You can still walk on it, BUT knowing where are you heading to. In other words, lift your head, look what’s in front, and know if you are walking on the path that you want. Know if there is alternative and better path, create your own path if possible, and tell yourself where you are heading to. Simply put, when you are doing something common that people doing, know what you are doing. Don’t do it because others are doing it.
7. Do things because of reason, not because you have to
After you learn and determine that you are walking on the right path that you want, you need to know the exact reason why you are walking on it. We don’t want the following generation to do things because they are asked to. We don’t want them to achieve things and do everything but in the end of their life, they are unsure of what are they trying to achieve.
The idea is similar to encourage them to ask “Why”, which is a really powerful word as you can see. When they are asked to do something, make sure they know the real reason behind doing it. Don’t study because other kids are doing it, let them know the reason to study is because they need to gain true and useful knowledge, not vaguely about sitting in exam to get good grade, good looking qualification, better job and better life.
8. Be brave and learn to say sorry
This is, again, not only the issue with Asians, many other people from other races and nations also have the similar issue. But I’m not sure if it’s just me, my experience dealing with people from other nations is quite different because they seems to have no problem saying sorry. In my usual life and experience dealing with my friends here, “
Sorry seems to be the hardest word” - Elton John.
This always make me recall some of the actions that I know from Asian parents. When parent did a mistake, you can’t expect them to say “I’m sorry for causing this….”, you can get any type of response except that. In certain case, and it’s quite frequent, they might blame something else and in the end, their main point is just representing that they are not at fault.
This is how egoism are built and practiced. And also influence the younger generation to perform the same behavior and say the similar things when they realize that they are wrong instead of admitting mistake and saying sorry.
Saying sorry when you suppose to is the key to avoid conflicts and make things better. In an usual case, I seen generation Y have serious issue admitting their are wrong. It’s like saying sorry means his/her entire life is worthless. We need to teach the younger generation to understand that sorry doesn’t crumble our life, it doesn’t means we are totally sinful and everything is our fault. We need to be sorry for the exact thing we did wrong, know what we are sorry for, know how to accept our weakness and improve ourself from mistake, so that we no longer need to stay with the same wrongful behavior and mindset.
9. Remember, we are Role Model, and everyone will eventually turn into one
“I don’t care how others think about me” is a brave thoughts. Able to live with it give us the idea and courage to do what we truly think is right. We no longer live in other people’s perception. In modern days, its quite often that our action and mindset is being denied without proper reason. The only thing we know is just people don’t agree with it, that is why we should not do that. Able to persuade our own path with the despise and disagreement of others is not a totally wrong idea. People denying you doesn’t mean they are always right, they just having their own reason. As long as you know what you are doing, you have the rights to put your action into test. You probably can guess what I’m going to say: this (again) create some type of problems.
In our generation, we have an extremely strong desire to do what we want and go all the way with our own ideal, even if many people have something to say about us. There are times when we can find people to agree with what we are doing. But there are also times when people are totally against it. With or without reason, it’s not surprising that we occasionally turn a deaf ear when people said something that against our liking. This further transform us into a being that is not willing to listen to others and just do whatever we want without caring of how others think and feel. It’s alright to do it because you have the choice but that is not how we want the next generation to think and behave, and we don’t want to future generation to focus on doing whatever they like without considering that younger generation will always learn from older generation .
Like it or not, younger generation will always look at us. How we think and behave will eventually influence them. They will follow what we do, just like when you admire someone and you wish to be like them. That is in a good way, but it also occur when they see people treating a waiter/waitress badly and they thought it’s okay to do so because others are doing it. WIllingly or not, our behavior will carve into their mind and always reminding them how others did in certain situation, and they might do the same when they do not know what is right and wrong.
This is why, remembering that you are a role model means you need to behave properly and give them a good reason to follow what you are doing. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter if they understand why you are doing this, if you are being a good role model and they follow you, eventually they will understand the good reason behind doing it.
10. Remember to Balance Out Happy Life and Tough Life
Unlike the old times where people struggle all the time to get a good job and a proper life, modern people are really fortunate. Most of the people in developed countries don’t experience starvation and the type of life where we would afraid that we couldn’t get a job and live in a proper house. Most of the people nowadays are more than enough fortunate, especially if you are at least able to access the internet and read this blog. They also have access to lots of luxury lifestyle and materials. Which is why the pain & suffering in the old days are not visible and understandable for many people, and telling them about those tough days can’t help much to make them understand that life was tough back to those days.
The younger the generation is, the more they do not understand tough life, as well as not willing to accept it. But I do see parents trying to make them understand how life supposed to be and bringing up all those true experience and events that once happened in the past. Of course, what parent said is real, but it’s just no longer apply to our current life. Modern people are obsessed with happy life, instead of understand how life was tough, they are more interested to life can be much more happier and better.
This is how people want life to be nowadays, so telling them that life is tough only make them felt that what you said is totally unrealistic. Instead, you need to make them think that life should have happiness, but it also need to go through hardship in order to learn and live to see the world, not just have fun all the time.
11. Life is not all about Own Self
Lastly, I think the most important thing is to realize that living is not all about keep on enriching your own life. Don’t focus on giving all the best for yourself and put all the time for your own personal life.
As the technology grew to be much more powerful and capable, people have access to the internet anytime they want and we can travel to many places when we want (and when our financial allow), we are getting more sources for access to activities and things that take us further away from our friends and family. Well, there are times when you can’t have your friend’s and family along when you travel, and accessing internet usually is by our self, not with friends and family.
In another perspective, it’s not just about friend’s and family, it’s also about the society and people around the world. Teach them to know the importance of living for the society and help out those who are poorer and need helps from others, just like when we need help when we are incapable of solving our own problems. We might think that we do not need to help others as there are always other parties who are willing to help, we only notice its importance when we are in the situation that desperately need helps from others. Don’t let the younger generation take things for granted, live for everyone and live out the best out of life.
