The Myth of the Conventional – The Myth is expecting things to remain the same, to buy into convention. It’s reassuring to think, what worked for my parents will work for me, study techniques, subjects haven’t changed, or even that the Post Office will always be there. They’re all comforting ideas. It’s comfortable to assume we don’t have to adapt, change and we can depend things.
The highly successful don’t depend on things to remain the same; they are the people who force change to happen. Conventional and conservative can sometimes be confused and parenting styles associated with them controlling, overbearing and strict. But when I looked at the discipline styles of parents of the super successful the had what I would call an unconventional parenting style. They would carefully select the few rules they chose to have and then enforced them with great consistency. On they other hand they would not sweat the small stuff and their children would respond in kind.
These high achievers were allowed a great deal of creative latitude to pursue their interests, encouraged to explore, make mistakes and live out nearly delusional fantasies. Nearly all of the high achievers came from conservative families ranging from poor to middle class, but none of them came from homes with loose rules. Yes, these families were liberal in the fact that they didn’t have many rules and their children were encouraged to dream big. However, these children excelled because they had firm boundaries to operate and be creative in. These children were free to make change and live without convention, overbearing rules stifling their creative change.
When we open our eyes and rub the sleep from the corners we see change everywhere. Change in the school system, changes in how we spend our time, what we consider entertainment, how we pay for things, the sophisticated gadgetry everywhere we look. Change isn’t a bad thing especially if we’re nimble enough to anticipate it, adapt to it and embrace the positive side.
Business consultant and philosopher Jim Rohn says it this way, “There is enormous power in getting up on any given day and knowing that you can create evolution or revolution in your life; incremental evolutionary change or radical revolutionary change any day you want.” It’s very common for the highly successful person to have this attitude toward their ability to change. They know that change is going to happen whether they like it or not. For them it is a matter of how much they can control or influence the effects of change.
The myth that we can depend on institutions, businesses, people and our health to remain the same or be dependable is risky. Speaking strictly in an earthly sense, “The only thing we can depend on is change.” Dr. Gene Landrum put it this way in his book Profiles of Female Genius, Thirteen Women Who Changed the World, “Unfortunately, conservative well-meaning, over-protective parents almost always prefer their offspring to preform “excellently” in contrast to performing “differently.” In Profiles the thirteen women included Margret Thatcher, Madonna, Oprah, Mary Kay Ash, and Liz Clairborne; they all came from homes and parental guidance that was permissive in terms of convention, but conservative when it came to morals and work ethic.
How often do we resist trying new food, or driving a new route? How often do we openly challenge why we did something “stupid”? Worst of all is how we react to mistakes our children make. The tendency to overreact to a poor grade or missed goal is powerful when we’re so invested in our children’s successes that we overlook learning and skill building opportunities. We teach them to depend on a steady, unrestricted climb to the top. We teach them to rely on convention.
Psychologists call them coping mechanisms, but for most of us it is simply how we learn to deal with uncertainty and change. The highly successful person commonly has the ability to look at things objectively rather than personally. When they make a mistake or even try something new they approach it from a perspective of curiosity or experimentation. If they try something and it doesn’t work they don’t take it personally, they chalk it up to experience. The next natural step is to innovate from what they have learned about their mistake. Learning the “wrong way” is often more important than learning the “right way” to do things, because it provokes the high achiever to innovate and create “their way.”
Teaching or parenting children to remain objective and ride waves of change isn’t as difficult as our adult minds might think. For all practical purposes children are agents of change; they’re changing at a rapid pace, learning, growing and experimenting. We mostly need to get out of their way and resist the urge to train them to fear their mistakes.
The high-successful learned from their upbringing to cope with change by being the agents of change. Rather than fearing what’s coming they see the tsunami and decide to ride it.
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