I remember in my childhood situations when my mom or dad explicitly told me or somehow demonstrated I was special or very good at something, little subjects in some cases. Like tinkering things, at school, running fast..
I think it is the right thing to do, especially with your kids, to show recognition, pride, explicitly show how much you love them and how her/his effort at the school, playing a sport, specific activity, etc doesn’t go unnoticed. Contribute to her/his emotional bank account
Then you grow up and in my case I experienced a similar pattern especially in the work environment. A healthy process in the form of recognition between peers. But what happens if you actually start to believe that? That you are a Guru regarding a topic, technology or area of expertise. Like some kind of Kwik-E-Mart President
Well that happened to me for some time, years maybe
I started my professional career very curious, trying to learn as much as I can and looking for challenges. But at some point the guru’s thinking started to grow. In my case, and looking in retrospective, greatly helped by the work environment. It looked.. natural
What is the problem with that? I think most of us will never achieve excellence, we are just on an infinite learning path truncated by our own life (the journey is the goal!) This guru’s thinking in my case greatly decreased my learning rate. Because if you are the best then you are at the top of the league, there is nothing left to learn, no room for improvement
At that point you probably stay most of the day sitting in a self-built throne with a shining armor, polishing and showing medals of achievements further and further away in time. And maybe as a consequence fighting battles less and less often
Why as a consequence? because you can lose a battle and mistakes can start to look like a red alert. A way to others and even yourself see you are not the best. That is very dangerous because this attitude is a way to reduce your learning even to the point of stop
Maybe this doesn’t happen to everyone. In my case, beginning to identify it was also a form of growth, maturity in my professional career and from that moment, about five years ago, I began to seek and travel other paths and develop another attitude
Always stay curious, embracing mistakes and also with a humble attitude, sincere about your own knowledge and respectful about the knowledge of other people
We are all special in different ways, we are all unique and also we are all just people trying to do their best and learning from our own mistakes. If you know Kung Fu, whatever your Kung Fu is, then show it
You will fight, you will learn new tricks from other people, you will lose, you will grow, you will try again and occasionally you will win and feel that big rewarding feeling, especially when it’s a team achievement