Thankfully you can get over this/yourself and let go of ego, ambition, achievement and all that unnecessary crap.
(Which is something he tries to fix.)
The principal told by parents "we have nothing else to offer your child", so I dropped out and started working fulltime. As much as I know I should be advocating to stay in school, I don't regret it for one second. As soon as I turned 18 I already had enough money to move out on my own and never looked back. Never went back to school.
As far as work qualifications goes... writing software, I have always gotten work based on my experience alone, nobody that I actually wanted to work for ever cared about some piece of paper, only what I could do.
Reminds me of the aphorism "whether you think you can or can't, you're right." I find this saying really insightful and true. Others may find it flippant and void of any meaning.
The sports analogy of what you shared is: "there are levels to this". At any given level-child, minor, high-school, college, division of college, semi-pro, overseas, pro, olympian, elite-pro, champion- it seems legitimate that the praise is bound to the context.
And getting to the next level requires more growth and effort to think it's even possible. Maybe you won't, but whether you think you can or can't...
Just some thoughts.
Instead I like to say “that will be a lot of work” which is generally true, can help someone succeed by focusing on something productive, and even failure at the given goal often results in something positive. Hard work simply pays better dividends than dreaming about what comes after success.
I want to add that "belief" in yourself, though as you say is rather a biased pathway, is still to me so essential and valuable. Because it is the thing that in some socioeconomic circles is taken for granted and in others is completely assumed in the reverse. So from a humanist perspective I'd rather people fall short of their dream than to never even be able to dream at all.
I guess I am saying it is the lived experience that counts. If you are blissfully naive then is it a better life? iono maybe! but that's reminds me of beautiful animals. And the difference between humans and animals, so far as we come to believe, is that we can choose to suffer. and understand happiness and in that be so utterly unhappy. hah
Totally agree. This is now the approach I’m taking with my 4 year old who is clearly quite bright.
I don’t think grade 2 or 3 grades will paint the picture for them. Elementary school grades saturate quickly, there isn’t enough dynamic range. What IQ do you need to get perfect marks in elementary school? Sure, you’ll know you are above average, but the social experience for someone with a very high IQ is extremely different from someone with a slightly above average IQ.
I think the real problem is not providing enough challenge, so they get used to succeeding without trying and never learn the emotional side of trying and failing, until they can’t keep up anymore, which for really bright kids may not happen until they are basically adults.
If you praise for doing what they can do without trying, you get this problem. If you meet them at their level and actually challenge them from a young age, while also praising them for being clever, I suspect you won’t see this problem.
By analogy, is it harmful to tell a kid he’s naturally good at soccer, while providing the resources and coaching necessary to take advantage of the potential? I imagine the dynamics should be similar from the skill acquisition angle, the difference is just how the activity to perform is generated.
One thing I loved from Osho (spiritual guru) is the notion that everyone thinks they are "extraordinary" but actually the happiest person is the person who is ordinary. Being ordinary and just eating breakfast and sleeping and doing a job is - in fact - extraordinarily rare.
Putting that aside, it's hard for me to associate simple with happiness. That's the opposite of motivation, from my unenlightened perspective. It's hardly a rational or smart choice since not being challenged also makes one a bit narrower when it comes to seeking out new experiences. But even if you take the intellect out of it, it 'feels' wrong. And some things are challenging to achieve and bring fulfillment.
If you have read it already, you should probably read it again.
This bothered me for so long until at some point, I just grew up. Peace is not nothing in the sense of null. It's nothing more in the sense of empty. I got this from some buddhist writing: emptiness is not the same as nothingness.
We are vessels and such. I found this tremendously helpful. Peace is like… space for being.
And so simple happiness, I'd say is not rudimentary, it's more like essential? The more I think on it, it's hard not to see the "core" happiness-es as quite profound. Like happy to exist. To experience each sense and such. I'd say that's quite amazing to get to that level of happiness. and we wouldn't call that "complex" happiness?
Which one would you prefer?
It's all postfactum explanation attempts, that create links that usually are not there.
Another, internally happier, positive and more cheerful person would be the exact opposite - would always find ways to spin things around for the positive.
It's all about the perspective.
It depends how it was told. Being told "you are smart" vs. "you are the smartest kid" makes a big difference.
Radical examples should be compared with each other, as should more balanced ones.
In both cases I would prefer to be told about being smart.
In a vacuum, self-confidence in kids is more useful than lack of it.
Looking at what I've accomplished and obtained, they're objectively better than average along pretty much every dimension. But, I still struggle to be satisfied. I know this is a me issue, but I also don't know how to change it.
It's interesting how different personalities (innate or learned -- probably doesn't matter here) interact with the same stimuli. It's easy for some people to wholeheartedly believe authority figures telling them that being smart and hard-working is all it takes to succeed, and it's easy for others to recognize that those qualities are neither sufficient nor necessary. The externalized thinking our elders do for us no doubt shapes our lives, but the impact of that shaping is more personalized than I ever used to give it credit for.
Can attest to this. By most accounts, I've "succeeded" much better than I expected, even as a former "gifted" kid. But I'm far from happy, either with myself, with my jobs, or with the fact that I'm not doing more for the world. I've left jobs that looked great on paper because they left me unfulfilled intellectually, only to end up in jobs that were worse.
I'm at a stage at which I actively fear my next job changes because 1. I'm getting close to the ageism barrier, which will limit my choices, especially in the current job market; 2. I suspect that working on something too boring could drive me to suicide.
The only change is that the baseline for unhappiness is higher (so not just food on the table and roof over your head, but a decent career and mid-class lifestyle is sufficient).
That said, do you go so far as to accuse an entire generation of parents of conspiracy to brainwash their kids? Have you ever considered that the advice they gave was appropriate? For a while in the 80s and 90s, pretty much all white collar jobs had multiple specializations within each job, such that it made sense to expect your kid would need to find some unique niche.
Instead, the subsequent decades demonstrated that specialized knowledge was being centralized behind corporations, and corporations would use the same technology available to individuals to centralize even more. It's not hard to see the internet and global connectivity as disruptors of 'old' normality.
I guess the point is that the advice given to you was fresh but went stale fast due to the world changing.