Who Makes You Better?

If you ask anyone if they want better - be better, do better, or achieve more compared to where they are presently - most people would answer in the affirmative. Wouldn’t you?

I don’t think anyone would eagerly decide that they want to live their life in the backroads of low achievement. No sane person would make such a decision consciously. That’s one of the main reasons many of us work very hard in life.

On arrival on earth, we spend our first few years of life acclimatizing to this planet with the help of our parents or guardians. Then, almost all of us spend the next 12 to 14 years in various stages of schooling. Some of us take that further as we attend college to earn degrees.

What’s more? After we start working, we continue our education and development through all kinds of learning and development activities such as trainings, conferences, and obtaining certifications. We do all these so that we can ensure and guarantee that we have better footings for success in life.

We take all these conscious steps to be better and to achieve more. However, some of our unconscious behaviors tend to take us down paths that are completely opposed to this.

One of those behaviors is turning a blind ear to people who can make us better, which is why I’m asking you the question:

Who makes you better?

I have discovered that one of the greatest treasures in life is having someone who makes you better. They speak the truth in love even when it hurts. They tell you when you’re wrong and humbly helps you get it right. But the typical human ego in us doesn’t want this. It doesn’t like it.

Most of us prefer to hang around only the kinds of people who validate us. While that is good and should be encouraged, you also need a few people in your life who will challenge you with the truth even when it’s uncomfortable.

Your ego may be may bruised in the moment when they point out your blind spots. But knowing what others see and you don’t, makes you better in the long run. This is especially true when you know that they love you and want the best for you.

So, I ask again: Who makes you better? Are you running away from them or towards them?

Other times, we discount the importance of bad experiences. We distance ourselves from the person who can make us better because they may not be manifesting the type of results we’re looking for.

Maybe they’ve made awful and damaging choices in the past and they’re still reeling from the effects. As a result, you don’t think their advice or guidance is valuable to you. That would be a great mistake.

Don’t let their current state in life prevent you from gleaning wisdom from the harsh lessons they have learned. Their past losses could be your future gain if you choose to stay close; if you allow them to make you better.

Once again, I ask: Who makes you better? How are you eagerly and actively learning from their failures so you don’t repeat the same mistakes they made?

Learning Unwanted Lessons

When he was a toddler, my first son went through a phase during which he was always drawn to the open candle flame we sometimes had lit on a table in the center of our living room.

If you live in Europe or North America, you’re most likely wondering why we had open fire inside the house. It was actually a very common occurrence at that time in many parts of Africa, even in the big cities.

Living at the time in a country with epileptic power supply, we would light a candle to provide some semblance of lighting in the evenings anytime electricity was out. But the attraction to that single flame was too much for 8-month old Paul to resist.

Each time he would crawl towards the fire to touch it, my wife and I would rush to pick him up. We didn’t want him to experience the pain that we knew would be the result. But he didn’t know this. How could he? He was just a baby! All he knew was that we were preventing him from something he really wanted.

Once we put him down after pulling him away, he would start crawling right back toward it.

After a while, I told my wife that we should just let him touch the flame. After all, it won’t kill him, I thought. And he would learn the reason we have been trying to prevent him from touching the fire.

But she wouldn’t have it. His mother’s kind heart won’t allow her to go along with my plan. So, she continued to run after him to pick him up from approaching the definite danger. Until when she didn’t.

One day, while she wasn’t paying attention, my son darted towards the flame again. I saw him, knew what was going to happen, but did nothing to stop him. My wife’s back was turned, so she didn’t see him.

Eventually, he reached the flame and poked his forefinger into it. By the time his sudden cries reached his mother’s ears, I was already there to pick him up. I rubbed the aching finger, blew on it and even licked it in an attempt to ease his pain.

After that incident, my son never touch the flame again. For a while after that, he would just sit on the floor and watch it from afar. I could tell he remembered the pain he had felt when he touched the flame.

What I described here is a common scenario for most parents. We take the job of protecting our children very seriously. From our experiences we know what’s dangerous and we try to shield them from these.

As they get older, we continue to try to steer them away from the mistakes we had made when we were younger. We want them to avoid the heartaches we had experienced. But in many cases, it’s all for nought.

During their teenage years, they begin to test boundaries. As young adults, knowing that you no longer have the power to compel them, they could choose to turn deaf ears to your warnings against making the mistakes for which you had experienced bad consequences.

You wonder why they’re so strong-headed and would not listen to you. It’s as if they seem bent on repeating the same mistakes. To them, you’re still operating with ideas and approaches best left behind in the stone age.

As I think back on this, it occurred to me that many of us who are parents today had similar responses with our own parents when we were younger. We thought their ideas were old and archaic. We felt they didn’t live in the modern world.

While this may be true in some instances, I have since recognized some of the painful lessons I have learned - heartaches that could have been avoided if I had simply listened to reason and wise counsel.

Of course, I didn’t know it was wise counsel at the time. I just thought they were trying to control my life. Yes, there may be parents who are too controlling. But most are simply trying to guide out of the immense love they have.

While it would be too late for some of us whose parents are no longer around, there’s still time for the rest of us. We would do well to seek, listen to, and reflect on their sage advice. It doesn’t mean you have to follow it. But you may be surprised at the wisdom nuggets that you could acquire in the process.

So, if you have a parent, relative, or friend who have had a longer life experience than you, it would do you a world of good to learn from them. Tap into their insights. Actively seek their counsel.

Their experiences may not apply directly to your situation, but you can still glean some pearls of wisdom that are helpful. Simply form the habit of listening to and reflecting on given advice with a positive attitude.

Actively ask for it too! You could be surprised at what you may learn.

Your future self will be thankful you did.