A large part of why some parents are called “good parents” is because they provide pressure where none was previously present. There are many people that have enough to be satisfied as living people, so in their case, there is no large pressure present to drive actions. The better parents tend to create a system of pressure on their children from thin air, so as to make their minds glad to be doing something they would have otherwise avoided. Examples of this are telling a child that they have to maintain the family profession, or that there are only a couple of choices of reasonable career. You can provide an internal pressure like this for yourself.
How can this pressure be created when it is not already there? The best way is to connect the pressure you want to add to your day to something in your environment that is changing. This can be your peers, local individuals, a company’s condition, momentum on the internet, or even a natural item like a fruit tree that is growing. As long as there is change coming from the item, you can latch onto that change, and use it as a signal of pressure instead of time.
Let’s say you decide to use a peer of yours that is working towards a different field of interest than yourself. You can make relations from your field to their field, in order to match up their actions with your desired actions. When they make a move to go to a seminar about their subject, this would be the prime time to require yourself to also go to a seminar on your subject, or perform the next step in your plan while they are at the seminar.
If your goal was to write for a daily newspaper in your city, you could set writing deadlines that matched up with the times when a popular site online published their articles. You would then know to start your next article when the online site had published theirs. As long as you found one that wrote on a regular basis, you could continue to build off of their consistency, and it would add an enjoyable twist to your work regularity.
If there is a habit you want to start performing at a certain time daily, one way to go would be to find someone doing something else around that time daily, and then follow their action with your action in a continuous cycle. As long as you have picked a consistent individual, you will start to not want to miss a day of connection with them, as that would break the newly found cycle. It is also almost certain that there is someone performing an action similar to the one you want to perform routinely in the same category as your item, and so that is the person to absorb energy in a pressure-type form from.
The pressures you add with this method can be a bit lighter on your mind than regularly created ones, as you know that no one but you is keeping track of your tentative deadlines. The more esoteric the way is that you build off of another’s momentum, the more likely you will see it as an inventive escapade. It would then be hard for someone to criticize your method unless you specifically explained it to them.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I partially agree and partially disagree with you about “good parents”.
“A large part of why some parents are called “good parents” is because they provide pressure where none was previously present…. The better parents tend to create a system of pressure on their children from thin air, so as to make their minds glad to be doing something they would have otherwise avoided.”
Ok, it sounds to me like those parents are teaching their children discipline and the value of good work. And I think that’s wonderful and important… but your next statement worries me…
“Examples of this are telling a child that they have to maintain the family profession, or that there are only a couple of choices of reasonable career.”
WHOAH! Hold the phone! I find it very bad when parents try to restrict their kids choices, trying to pressure them into things they don’t like and will never like.
If the family business is, say, plastics, and the kid really just don’t care about plastics, then pressuring the kid to continue the family business will just mess him or her up. What happens most of the time when parents try to pressure their kids into a field they don’t want is this: there is much halfhearted energy put forth going into that, and at some point it breaks, and the son or daughter starts to pursue their own path.
But that might happen in college, might happen a few years after college, or a person might have no initiative and keep on doing something cause they’ve done it and be a mediocre doctor or a mediocre lawyer and not be particularly happy or successful… even though they are in a “good” profession.
Meanwhile, that person really wanted to be a musician, or a pilot, or an architect, or whatever, and they could have been damn good at that, and loved it (and made a good living off of it, too), but because what they really wanted wasn’t supported by their parents when they were at a vulnerable age, they don’t pursue it.
That’s why I think restrictive pressure is bad…. parents shouldn’t “pressure” their kids. Rather, they should encourage, support, motivate and empower them. In particular, parents should NOT try to pressure their kids toward or away from a certain career path. Rather, parents should teach their kids to find their own dreams and pursue them with passion and discipline.
p.s. This song illustrates my point nicely…
http://www.pp2g.tv/vZ3×8anA_.aspx
“I know I can… be what I want to be.
If I work hard at it, I’ll be where I want to be.”
- NAS, I can
There is much positive material here. One thing I want to add in is that the line about telling the child to maintain the family profession is beneficial in order to get the child to understand that they either follow their parent’s desires or aggressively follow their own earlier in their life.
You do bring up valid points about if it is forced upon the child, because they will then be almost guaranteed to be against the message.
Restrictive pressure sure would not be helpful, and so the parents would want to avoid actually restricting the child in any way. It would be more about putting mental pressure on him to open his mind about the options he would want to follow.
Actually, I think the only long-term useful pressure is that which you put on yourself. Parents often think that they’re teaching self-discipline by pushing their kids to do what they should be doing, but often they are teaching just the opposite. Kids who have been provided steady external discipline sometimes don’t develop internal discipline.
I find that the best thing is to show your children your own self-discipline such as self-imposed deadlines and doing things you don’t want to do just because they need to be done, while sitting down and explaining to them what the benefits of being self-disciplined are. Also, parents should give their children practice pushing themselves to do things instead of waiting for adults to put the pressure on.
Aileen: I think we are on nearly the same page here. That is true about steady external discipline possibly not leading to internal discipline developing.
The point about providing children with practice to push themselves is probably one of the more difficult processes to undertake, since the goal is to develop their traits somewhat indirectly.
The divide between empowering someone else, verus performing the action for them, is one that is vital to avoid crossing when looking to provide children with satisfaction for their efforts.