As we embark on life’s journey, the road forks a bit more often than when we are nearing the end. The choices we make are driven by us taking leaps based on an estimation of our capabilities, which may be off or on the mark. The need to prove ourselves varies in intensity and depends on personal capability and freedom to choose our paths. As humans, we often err when it comes to making an honest assessment of our capabilities. We tend to either underestimate or overestimate our ability to achieve. The path to prove ourselves can end up being disappointing in both cases.
In the first instance, we are bored by achieving too easily and in the second, we are left frustrated by not even coming close to our aspirations. Choosing an easy path despite high ability will lead to boredom and lingering remorse over a wasted opportunity. Choosing a difficult path but not having the ability to follow it causes disappointment. Those of us who most accurately map our capabilities with the path we choose to prove ourselves achieve the most enduring match. Founders choose the most difficult path to prove themselves and are able to match this choice with their ability.
Childhood stories are buried deep in our memory. Our elders tend to remind us only about the happy parts. The unpleasantness of our stressors is not remembered accurately or pushed back in our memory. These stressors bring varying degrees of mastery and control to us as children. Many childhood experiences shape our personalities. Different levels of sadness and trauma are in store for all of us in our cosmic lucky draw. By an accident of generational hand-me-downs, inherent nature, incidents and role models, each of us chooses a different mechanism to fight back and win.
Childhood experiences impact each of us differently, depending on our support network, attitude and ability to regulate emotions. Those children who can master the situation, with ability or doggedness with some help from a loving supporter, will build a resilient core. As these children grow older, their strong resilient core enables a journey of self-growth. They can deal with the high degree of stress that comes with their choice of path and continue to be effective. They are not geniuses who have all the answers. Their childhood was like everyone else’s but they choose to draw out the most difficult curve on life’s path.
What situations did they encounter in their childhood that intensified their need to prove themselves to a level most humans would not bother with? What stressors and psychosocial protective factors did they encounter that led them to develop the degree of resilience needed to achieve their goals as adults?
Twelve-year-old Smalltown Studious had just finished his final exams. Always one to live up to his name, Studious put in more hours of studying than any other child in his class, in his family or in the neighbourhood. During his final exams, he had deprived himself for days of any entertainment. No TV. No gaming. No play. Just cramming and solving one maths problem after another. Now, with his exams done, he rushed home filled with excitement, impatient to turn on the television and enjoy hours of watching Doraemon. He couldn’t wait to eat the treat that waited for him at home – to celebrate the end of the exams, his mother had cooked his favourite, poha. He came home, carelessly chucked his bag in the corner of the cramped room, and settled himself on the bed in front of the TV. His mother gave him a warm hug and brought out the hot poha. He leaned back against the pillow as he ate, guffawing loudly at Doraemon’s antics.
Unexpectedly, his father came home early. Doing odd jobs to make ends meet since his shop had to be closed down, his mood swings had taken a southward turn. He was irritable most of the time, and the malaise that accompanied him everywhere accused him of a failed life. His eyes fell on the discarded bag on the floor and then on the pre-teen sprawled on the bed enjoying his poha – having too much fun in life. The next moment cast a shadow so deep on the boy that for the rest of his life, he would not be able to look at poha with the joy he had felt earlier that day. Fun became an awkward, guilty activity from then on. This situation was a stressor but not entirely unusual.
Many fathers can’t bear to see their kids having unadulterated fun. This boy was not average, though. His emotional response was to achieve self-sufficiency with focus. An unwavering focus whose foundation rested on stubbornness. Inspired by the resoluteness of Eklavya, the boy learnt to do what he could do best – work hard to score high. He was beset by the need to control outcomes, the need to grow out of his tiny home and, most of all, by the insatiable need to be appreciated. This trauma, replayed year after year, became a tsunami of powerful emotions that the boy learnt to manage and channel.
Suburban Superkid lived in a sprawling urban mess with his parents and two younger siblings. His parents had worked for as long as he could remember. His father was an assistant engineer in the electricity board, and his mother taught physics at the university. Their home was so far from their offices that both parents had to leave by 6 am to reach work on time.
As the eldest child, whenever his parents got caught up at work, the responsibility of looking after his siblings landed on Superkid. Which was every other day. This meant waking up earlier than anyone else at home, finishing up his school work, packing paranthas and sabzi in his siblings’ tiffins and getting them ready for school. The school bus would not wait, and time had to be managed precisely to accommodate his somnolent sister’s lethargic movements and his brother’s tendency to throw up his breakfast if he ate too fast. Juggling the numerous balls of time pressure, cranky dependents and parental expectations wired Superkid’s brain to perform tirelessly at expanded bandwidth. The pressure immunity was so strong when it came to managing dependency that Superkid never thought of it as a chore. It was natural to handle the stress of managing people to move towards a common goal – catching the bus on time.
Natkhat National grew up in nine cities, changed seven schools and anchored his comfort to change. His friends spoke seven different languages, followed five religions and had home situations starkly different from each other: matriarchal, patriarchal, orphaned, joint, nuclear, inter-caste, inter-religion. He had seen enough to not even notice diversity. He could walk into unfamiliar situations and feel at ease instantly. With a mild-mannered father exploited by a system that emphasized only the transferable in his transferable job, Natkhat was exposed to Bharat darshan at close range. Every time the family unpacked, settled into their new home and grew new roots, it would be time to pack up again and depart. The family’s belongings would find their way back into the black metal trunks stencilled with a long abandoned permanent address. Natkhat’s comfort with landing in a new location, making it home and restarting had built a core of positivity that had been strengthened by many tearful farewells and images of temporary homes disappearing through the tiny back window of the rickshaw that coughed its way to train stations. Natkhat knew no fear, and the stress of new situations did not faze him. He would always be the new boy in class with the most friends and the richest stories to share about his experiences.
Excerpted with permission from Tightrope to the Moon: How Mega Founders Win the Start-Up War, Rahul Chandra, Penguin India.
