Why do I believe that my parents & I see small vs large companies in a different light?
I had written that where my parents see risk and failure in small companies, I see potential & opportunity. Where they see comfort, success, pride, and prestige in large companies, I see stagnation, confinement, boringness, and bureaucracy. Why?
Well hmm, I don’t think my mindset I’ve described is a healthy one. What I envy eludes me.
So the more I look down on bigger companies, that’s more of a limiting belief that I’m placing on myself from creating an organization that can eventually become one of those bigger companies. Same concept with money.
I think it’s just because of my experiences with larger companies and people I know who’ve experienced things that reinforce that belief. But it’s no the fact that they are large companies that I have those beliefs. It stems from a lack of organization and systemization, among other things.
Very ironic that the very definition and root word of organization is ‘organize’ but we see examples of the opposite everywhere. LOL, should we call such companies ‘disorganizations’ if they don’t deserve such a title of implying that they’re actually organized?
Back to the original question. Let’s answer the parents piece.
I would guess that their archetype for success is a middle class immigrant family who raises smart, healthy children. Relating habits and some of my other ideas here, there is a plateau that happens at different levels of learning a new habit.
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That’s on a micro scale. What if we expanded that to a macro scale? At some point, to get somewhere financially and professionally where we haven’t been before, we have to think and do things that we’ve never thought and done before.
Their belief in early adult life might have been to achieve exactly what we have right now. They would have seen other families in similar situations, their peers, go along the same path. Success by their early adult definition was to have a job at a brand name company that they could share with their relatives back home. So they could tell them, not arrogantly or facetiously, but with healthy pride and love, “We made it!”
By that definition of success, they’ve already achieved success many years ago. But as is human nature, desire kicks in. But I think the way that desire manifested itself is that since they’ve already accomplished what they wanted to, let’s say 25 years ago, the mind looks for things that we’re lacking in and other are succeeding in.
They see their peers’ kids getting higher grades, more accolades, accepted into more prestigious universities, working at more recognizable organizations, getting paid more. And as a result, assume that they are successful. And according to that assumed, perhaps unconscious, definition of success, they are right. Seeing all those examples only reinforces their beliefs.
The assumption that their definition of success automatically implies and applies to my definition of success may be a deep unconscious belief. Not just success, though. Literally every single belief, word, has to be inspected to determine how closely aligned people are.
Looking at one of my first few sentences about the dichotomous nature, the opposite adjectives essentially prove that it’s a non-dualistic reality. That one thing can be multiple thing. (And conversely, many things are actually just one thing).
My parents would want me to follow their definition of success because that’s what they’ve seen, heard, and experienced. And they’re right. Success can definitely happen at large companies. And I’m right. Stagnation can also definitely happen at large companies.
I think it boils down to, here in this context, to alignment of definitions of words we use presuming unanimous understanding.
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