Quote:
Originally Posted by Photonate
I was just thinking and realized a lot (if not all) of the time I do or want to/think about doing things more to impress, or make others proud of me, rather than for my own personal benefit and improvements. For example, if I think about going back to school, and having a successful career, the only (or at least primary) reason and motivation behind doing so is to impress my family/friends (primarily my father) and make them proud of me, rather than to better myself or for my own personal improvement.
So I'm just hoping to get some advice or input on how I can change this, and do/want to do things with my life for myself, as I can imagine that doing things for my own benefit/improvement rather than to just impress or make others proud of me would yield a lot better results.
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Childeren want to please their parents because the parents know what's best for them. They are the childs role models to learn from. Sometimes parents want their child to be extraordinary or special in some way instead of just helping them grow and learn. This way normal, good or even very good things can be met with reactions as if it's not good enough. The child wants to do what's good for the child, thinking the parent knows this best and based on the reactions of the parent it becomes about impressing the parent to get the validation of the parent that the child is doing it right.
One way of dealing with it is realising that as an adult other people usually don't know better what's good for you than yourself. A person can be proud of you, impressed with what you did, but what matters eventually is what you think about it.