We instill in our children when they are younger that they can be anything that they want to be when they grow up as long as they put their mind to it. We as adults understand that putting our mind to something requires more than just thinking up a dream and wishing it to be so. However, our children (while smarter than we often give them credit for) do not grasp at a young age what putting their mind to something actually entails.
I think that we are in a time period where we can’t just say you can be whatever you want as long as you go for it. We have to start telling our children early what going for it is actually going to mean. When I was younger I had huge dreams and while I never had my dreams reinforced by my mother (or anyone in my family to be honest) there were a few teachers who told me that I could be whatever I wanted to be but they never told me about all of the hard work that had to go behind those big dreams and extreme ambitions.
I think that we want so much for the children of the future to pursue their dreams that we forget to inform them of all of the tenacity that they will need and the patience that they will have to learn to develop. We neglect to tell them of all the hard work and studying of the things that they want to achieve that they will need to do in order to get anywhere near accomplishing their dreams.
We forget to remind them that pure talent will not do anything for them if they don’t have the drive to do something with that talent. If their ambitions are to be their own business person we must be sure to reiterate to them how important marketing and promotion of themselves will be which requires confidence because they have to be confident about themselves if they want others to be confident about them and whatever services they were trying to offer.
Our dreams come to us out of nowhere and it doesn’t take anything to have the vision, or even the desire to make those dreams happen. But those dreams cannot come to fruition without certain habits that have to be developed in pursuit of those dreams. They say the problem with the generation coming up is that they expect everything to be handed to them and that they don’t think they have to work for anything and to some extent that is because we fail to tell them that yes they can be whoever they want to be and have all of the things that they want to have but they have to have the work ethic to match the drive to become what they want.
Nothing comes to us easy and while there are some extremely lucky people which seem to have their dreams fall right into their lap because they know all the right people or they have better timing than others, for almost everyone out there going for that dream you have to put in the work and hustle hard.
So make sure to let your children, or grand-children, or any children in your life know that yes they can most certainly be anything they want to be but make sure they are aware that it won’t be easy, it won’t come overnight, and if it’s worth it to them they have to put in more work than they could even imagine they would have to. Arm them with the fact that just dreaming and having the talent and ability will not get them any closer to that dream without the work that goes with it. These children are our future and we have to make sure they are fully prepared with all of the information.
Jimmetta Carpenter
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