The village effect

Unless the parents have enough self-awareness as to asks themselves at some point in their lives

“What do I model for my child with the way I conduct my life?”

and, if necessary, instigate a change in their lives the chances that their child’s life will be significantly different from theirs are feeble.

If so, the only way a significant change can happen is when the child suddenly believes something that was not part of her reality so far. This doesn’t happen very often. Usually a momentous event (a quantum moment, as Wayne W. Dyer called it) is needed that will cause a substantial paradigm shift.

But parents’ problematic or limiting worldview isn’t the only problem.

If the parents lack self-awareness, their whole environment, the people they come in contact with most often (relatives, friends, neighbors and peers) also lack it.

If these parents live the TGIF version of life, always complaining about their lives, their jobs, their bosses, etc. and doing nothing to change that, so do the people whom they hang out with on a daily basis.

The thing is these parents don’t live in a vacuum. They’re part of a social network and we can rightfully assume that the people in this network basically have the same worldview.

More than anything we want to be accepted by our environment. Thus we choose to hang out with people who have a worldview that is similar to ours and therefore who approach work, career building and life in the same way as we do.

We like to be around people who are similar to us. We feel good when we know that we fit in. We accommodate to those whom we hang out with, but only to those who live the same version of reality as we do (those with the same beliefs, preconceived notions, limitations and fears). Together we make sure that the outliers are being kept at bay.

As a group we like to think that we are smart and to convince ourselves that we do the right thing, or that we are the ones who know what life is about.

In such environments a radical change is almost impossible. And more often than not a radical change is what would bring the most value to our lives.