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Your Passion

vs Your
Parents
We live in a more confusing time than ever today.

Entire industries have sprung up that never existed just one or two
decades ago. The old way of doing things is often broken.

Because of this, much of the advice that was passed down through the
generations has become obsolete. Conventional wisdom is sometimes no
longer relevant.

Every day, we’re barraged with advice from ​other​ people about how to
live our lives. Parents, siblings, teachers, friends, society at large all tell
you how to live your life. Everyone imposes their will on you, whether
they mean to or not.

As a result, young people are pushed into careers they never wanted.
They choose their college majors based not on their interests but on what
their parents think is best. (By the way, I think the whole idea of
choosing a major at 18 is ridiculous to begin with)
They (or I should say, we, as I still identify as a young adult) seem to
never cultivate a sense of identity, instead relying on the guidance of
someone else to tell them what to do next. The concept of choosing their
own life path is foreign to them.

It’s unfortunate, because those who listen too much build a habit of
trusting others to make decisions for them. As time goes on, this habit
only grows stronger, leading to a life of conformity and blind trust in
authority figures.

I get it though. We’re all heavily influenced by our parents. We care


about what they think and how they’ll react. We’re worried about
disappointing them. We’re worried about disobeying them. We wonder if
we’re doing them a disservice by not following their advice.

Deep down, they also probably just want us to have a better life than they
did. Sometimes this relentless pressure only makes us more stressed and
uncertain about our future.

However, I think there comes a time when it’s in our best interest,
perhaps even our ​obligation​, to cut the cord and become self-reliant. At
the end of the day, you’re your own person. Regardless how important
you value following your parents, you will never be fully satisfied living
your life under someone else’s watchful eye.

In today’s world, it’s especially important to take responsibility for your


own career. Your parents may have the best intentions for you, but their
inherent conservatism and fear of uncertainty aren’t particularly suited
to the world today.

Here are several reasons why you should be cautious about listening to
your parents:
Outdated Information.

It goes without saying, but your parents grew up in a different time than
you did. The system that worked thirty, forty, fifty years ago may be
entirely obsolete today, particularly given the speed at which industries
now change today. As Reid Hoffman, Founder of Linkedin, says, for the
last sixty or so years, the career path for most adults looked like an
escalator. You graduated from college, found an entry-level job at a big
company, worked your way up the hierarchical ladder at the same
company, and received greater pay and job security with every step.
When you retired, you could expect to receive a comfortable company
pension and Social Security.

For many adults, this vision held true. So they passed along this idea to
their children, encouraging them to follow in their footsteps.

The problem is, what worked before doesn’t necessarily work today. With
rising tuition costs and burgeoning student loans, it’s now debatable for
certain people whether college is even necessary for their goals. The
corporate escalator that once existed is more like a tar pit given the
current climate. The push for students to then immediately find a
corporate job also derails many from starting their own businesses or
pursuing their creative talents or joining a start-up.

Many parents also push their kids into certain occupations, because
traditionally they have always been in demand and paid well: lawyers,
doctors, pharmacists, bankers, and so on. The problem again, however,
is that such advice is based on prior, potentially outdated, information,
and ignores prevailing trends in society at present. For instance, one of
the fastest growing sectors in today’s economy is digital marketing. You’ll
never hear adults advise their kids to enter this industry simply because
it did not exist​ until recently. A quick way to success is to ride the waves
of upward momentum, and to ignore these kinds of trends would be a big
mistake.

Many of my friends are currently in pharmacy school because their


parents advised them it was a relatively easy and safe way to make a
comfortable salary. For many decades, it was. But now insiders believe
that the profession may be on a ​decline​, driven in-part by advances in
technology but also by consolidation of big pharmaceutical players and a
growing supply of pharmacy graduates. The same is true for the law
profession, where you see a huge imbalance of supply/demand causing
many law grads to work at underpaid or low-tier jobs.

Many people seem trapped in the traditional way of thinking that there
are only a handful of viable career options to choose from. I thought this
way for a long time, as well, because my parents and classmates only ever
talked about that handful. But the world is a massive place, and there are
jobs and needs and gaps to fill that you or I couldn’t even possibly
imagine. They’re out there though. It just takes additional effort to find
them.

Different Risk Preferences.

Parents are much more risk averse when it comes to their children than
they are with themselves, even if that risk comes with a chance of
massive success (i.e. most parents would rather their child take a
corporate job than start their own business). This isn’t necessarily a fault,
it’s simply that most parents never want to see their kids in any sort of
pain or discomfort. Under this light, it makes sense why parents push
their children into jobs such as bankers, lawyers, doctors, etc. These are
traditionally careers where there’s a clear roadmap to follow to get from
A to Z, and typically reward aversion to risk. Do as you’re told, don’t step
outside certain boundaries, and you’ll steadily receive increased power
and income.

Sure, fine for some people. But your appetite for risk will invariably differ
from that of your parents. What if you want to pursue your creative
talents, or try your hand at entrepreneurship? The probabilities of
success are lower, but if obtained could result in much greater financial
returns. Some parents, however, can be unsupportive, and may try to
deter you from doing so. They’re unwilling to see their children fail,
because it’ll reflect badly on them.

My parents persuaded me to give up poker. I had to hide the fact that I


played at all for a very long time – despite the fact that I had been
consistently making 5-figures a month – because I knew what their
reaction would be. When they did find out, they encouraged me to quit to
focus on my studies, claiming that poker had led to a drop in my grades.
But for me, poker was never meant to be a long-term, full-time job. I
knew it would just be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Still, I eventually
succumbed to their line of thinking. I would have loved to take a year off
from school and traveled abroad while playing poker as a source of
income, but I was too scared what my parents would think at the time.

Sometimes parental concern is warranted, of course. Maybe you’re not


actually that great at your perceived talent, and need someone to
truthfully guide you toward a better path. That’s what happened to Kevin
O’Leary. He had aspirations of becoming a photographer, but his father
pulled him aside one day and told him to get an MBA instead.
Ultimately, it’s up to you to take your parents’ advice into consideration,
but as I’ll elaborate later on, it should not be the sole guiding factor in
your life.

Misalignment of Interests.
This one goes without saying, but your parents are going to have
different interests than you. These conflicts of interest create a divide
between the ​whys​ of what you do between you and your parents. If you
never understand why you’re doing something, you’re going to feel
empty eventually.

Sometimes this manifests by parents trying to live vicariously through


kids’ achievements. These parents essentially use their children’s
achievements to “one-up” their friends. “Your son got into Columbia
Law? That’s great, but my son just got into Harvard!”

In fact, a study showed that the more parents see their child as an
extension of themselves, the greater the likelihood of them wanting their
offspring to fulfil their own failed dreams. “Parents then may bask in the
reflected glory of their children, and lose some of the feelings of regret
and disappointment that they couldn’t achieve these same goals,”
Professor Brad Bushman, co-author of the study said.

A Life of “What If”

When asked what their biggest regret in life was on their deathbeds, the
number one regret of the dying was that they wished they’d lived a life
true to themselves, and not the life others expected of them. “When
people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it
is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled,” nurse Bronnie
Ware writes.

Indeed, this is one of the consequences of following your parents’ life


path without question. One day, whether in your 20s, 30s, 40s, or on,
you may examine your life and the direction it took, and wonder how you
ever got there. Many refer to this as the mid-life or quarter-life crisis.
If you want to avoid such a fate, you have to ask yourself what you really
want out of life every so often, and if you’re happy with the way your life
is. Are you willing to sacrifice your own life to please others, to seek
approval from others who think they know best for you?

Forgoing current happiness in the hope it will arrive in the future has
been proven to be a shoddy method of achieving happiness. Not to say
you should avoid any kind of pain or struggle, but doing so based on
your​ desires and not someone else’s is what brings meaning to life.

Neglect of Your Competitive Advantages

Following someone else’s life path ignores one of the most important
aspects in finding fulfilling work: your strengths. While hard work
cannot be understated, it’s almost impossible to be the best in a given
field without a natural affinity for it. Millions of people overseas can now
do many of the jobs today – what makes you so special? Just like being
better than the competition is crucial to any business’s success, the same
is true for our careers.

Discovering your competitive advantage is a necessary component to


deciding which opportunities to pursue and which to forgo. The problem
is, when was the last time a parent conducted an intensive investigation
into their child’s strengths and weaknesses before pushing them onto a
career path? The path you end up on may not align with what you’re
naturally good at. This isn’t to say that your strengths and weaknesses
are fixed, of course. You can develop and improve on the array of skills
you have. But we’re all born with different capabilities in various
abilities, and not taking advantage of these is short-sighted.

Personal Bias
Let’s say your parents grew up amidst a terrible recession, often going
without food for days and largely strapped for money. Their views on
money and work will always be tainted by this experience.

My parents, for instance, largely grew up without much money. To them,


making a comfortable salary at a stable job without much variation
day-to-day is their ideal life. They’ve both worked in corporate,
bureaucratic jobs all their lives. I have to take all of this into
consideration when they advise me to find a corporate job.

One thing I always advise when looking to take advice from anyone is to
study the advice-giver. Is he or she living the type of life I’d want to live?
What kind of job is he working in, how much money does he make, what
are his aspirations and goals and values? If they largely align with yours,
then his advice becomes that much stronger, and vice versa.

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