Skills Secrets – Growing up with Good Parents is Best
You always hear the mantra to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And, some people actually do it. It is possible. However do you ever see someone that was abused, grew up in real bad poverty, and then became the CEO of GM or something? It is possible, but statistically hugely improbable. Why?
The Environmental Skill Set
You get a skill set from the environment you grow up in. For example, if everyone in your neighborhood says crap when they see a dog it is highly likely you will end up doing the same. Then, when you see your boss with a dog it is highly likely you will say crap. He might think you are weird.
Usually, you can tell if you want to hire someone in a few seconds. Why? Little mannerisms give away where you came from and how you feel about life. People like to feel comfortable and usually hire people like themselves. Therefore, even if you are qualified, do you have the right skill set? Is your skill set gangster or suburban? This is one of the hardest barriers to overcome. Did you know that 80-90 percent of communication is non-verbal? Maybe you can relearn the nonverbal you never really tried to learn, but probably not.
The bottom line is to match your skill set with where you would like to work.
Brain Growth
As a child and teenager, your brain grows around what you learn. All those neurons and synapses fire around environmental stimulus. When you begin to learn something at a young age it sets a neural pathway. These pathways are set by the time you are an adult.
To find out what you are awesome at, think about what you enjoyed doing as a child. It can give you major clues on real talent.
Children Have Poor Foresight
Without experience and knowledge children can’t really decide what is best. That’s why children have parents. What happens when children have a poor parent? Sadly, the child is not stimulated with the right things. This sets up their mind for later life difficulties. The children won’t learn what they could have learned. This point, alone, shows the fallacy of pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Unlearning and Learning
It’s likely that once the child determines where they want to change their life, it is often too late. How do you unlearn a lifetime of non-verbal learning and then start learning new intellectual information.
The problem is that the learning will be quite difficult. The brain is not ordered in the same way as the suburban child. What usually happens is that people quit because they feel it is too hard.
Another large factor is that these children do not have role models. Once again, they make inferences from what they see around them and there aren’t any big CEOs looking to be their friends.
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