Learn from your parent’s mistakes

Our parents are the first people we interact with in life. They influenced our conscious and unconscious mind, knowingly or unknowingly.

The apple does not fall far from the tree.

As we grow older we tend to think that we are living our independent lives without any outer influence on our personality, character, habits and way of thinking. This is far from the truth. Of course we are making our own decisions and our lives look different than those of our parents, but our decisions and the course of our life has been strongly shaped by imitating the actions and habits of our parents. The possibility that overweight parents will have overweight children is high. The possibility that parents who smoke or drink will have children who smoke or drink is high. This is why it is important to learn from the mistakes of our parents and try to be different in the bad and similar in the good.

I was walking some days ago and thought about my personal fitness. I haven’t really been active in the last couple of years. Luckily, I have been working out with my father from a very young age and my overall fitness looks good, even when I am not doing much physical training. I am 27 years old and when my father was 27 years old he had been in much better shape than I am currently in. My father worked out everyday. He was known for his strength and physical endurance. Later in life, after he married my mother and created four children, he let himself go. He got overweight and did not workout for many years. He was not the man he used to be. He started having physical issues because of his lack of movement. I am standing here now, at 27 years old, lazier and weaker than my father at 27. If gaining weight and becoming lazy could happen to my father, then worse things can happen to me if I do not take care of my physical health and strength. That is why I have to learn from my father’s mistake. Try to find at least half an hour everyday for the minimum amount of moving my body, even if it means taking a walk.

This, of course, is only one of many examples in which parents can be fallible. Looking at the mistakes of our parents is beneficial because we witness the consequences of their actions first-hand. Later in life we will meet other people and observe their mistakes and the consequences that will arise, but it may be too late for us to gain wisdom because we may have already been through the same problems. The problems our parents face are mostly problems that arise when people have become comfortable with their lives and they let themselves go. The notion that they have achieved whatever there was to achieve, especially after creating a family… a notion which they regret eventually.

What needs to be considered is that oftentimes, finding out the mistake can be very difficult. We see the negative consequences but where did they come from? Analyzing the negative consequences and following them back to their causes is laborious, but once achieved, it will open up a path for destroying generational trauma. Mistakes that are repeated from generation to generation. Those mistakes are obstacles to the success of many people who fall victims to the bad habits and mistakes of their parents.

Parents are our first role models. We need to learn from their mistakes in order to become better versions from generation to generation. When we have our own family, we should talk to our children about our own bad habits and mistakes. Teach them to be better and not repeat them. They will be thankful.

Fortis Fortuna Adiuvat