It is so easy to write off people around us. “She will never complete her education”, “He will never be stable in his life”, “She is incapable of going out for work”, “He will never be a success”. There are so many such examples where one person totally writes off another. If we are doing this at hour home to our family members, it has got deeper consequences. Children tend to believe what adults tell them and they cannot distinguish an opinion from a fact. For them, anything that an adult expresses is a fact. If children believe these negatives about themselves, they may live up to those expectations.
Even for adults around us, it is good not to write off people. If we cannot support them through their personal crises it is good to keep silent instead of condemning a person totally. Every child and adult needs someone, at least one person, to believe in their capabilities, in their strengths and in their ability to bounce back from setbacks. Often that is all it takes for a person to handle their adversity. One another person believing in them.
The human mind is very flexible and very unpredictable. I have seen so many people who had been written off, bounce back and go on to achieving greater milestones in their lives. It just takes a switch in the mind for a person to change from being disinterested in academics to becoming a passionate academic, from being hesitant to going out into the world, to make a career of a late job, from being stage shy to rocking it there. On the flip side, we have to remember that the same switch can be turned to another side too with ease.
It is said that most teenagers are one understanding adult away in their lives from making a success of it. The same applies to all of us too. Fortune to misfortune and vice-versa can happen in the blink of an eye. It is good to be the one adult in other people’s life whose belief in their abilities helped them make it.
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