In one of my first posts (Personal Mastery and the Journey Within), I had introduced the concept of personal mastery. In this post, I would like to highlight the relevance of this concept to parenting.

Parenting has probably always been a challenging job – across generations, whichever parents one talks to. However, the challenge seems to have gotten amplified in recent years – I reckon the growing prosperity, rise of individuality, decline of family and other social structures, and a decline in meaning in people’s lives are significantly contributing towards this.

There’s been a tremendous rise in the sense of individuality and need for personal success in recent years – particularly in developing nations. This has happened with growth of prosperity and the disproportionate rewards for individual success – creating a culture driven by desire to get ahead and win at any cost. The growing prosperity also brings with it a multitude of choices – for consumer goods, for gadgets, for leisure etc. As a result, parents are focused on maximizing their individual pleasure by chasing their careers and their personal pursuits – and they now have real choices to do so too. Alongside, the social structures are breaking down. The joint family system has come apart – in fact, in the race for financial success, a number of nuclear families maybe faced with a situation where one of the parents is working in one city and the rest of the family lives in another. All this puts tremendous pressure on parenting…

To complicate the situation further, children these days on the other hand, have enormous exposure during their childhood years. Because of television and the Internet, a 14 year old today has about the same exposure has her parents had in their lifetime. When the parents do not have time for their children, television, Internet, and the peer group take over as the biggest influencer for them.

Some of the results are disturbing. More than one-third of all murders in the US are committed by offenders under the age of 21 – the recent shoot out at Virginia Tech was a chilling reminder of the malaise. Over the decades, incidence of drug-abuse among the youth, of teenage pregnancies, and of depression at puberty have all grown substantially.

How can personal mastery be of use in this challenging situation. To me, personal mastery is the journey of self-discovery leading to consistently living the purpose of one’s life. It requires a high emphasis on self-knowledge, clarity of one’s personal vision and its interconnectedness with the people and the world around.

It captures the essence of a person being highly self-aware, having a deep sense of one’s purpose in life and its context with the people around. Firstly, clarity about one’s purpose would refocus such a person on her most important priorities in life. For a parent, this is bound to bring attention to making the time for his children. Further, a person skilled at personal mastery will have greater comfort in understanding others and developing a deeper connection with them; building an open communication with his children – possibly one of the most challenging goals, particularly for parents with teenage children. Also, the high degree of self-acceptance for such a person allows her to better accept the reality of her child’s world – resulting in a nurturing and facilitative approach rather than a directive and judgmental one. Lastly, children learn an awful lot from observing the behavior of their parents and a parent with high personal mastery would be a wonderful role model for them.

I would like to end my comments with a lovely poem by Kahlil Gibran on bringing up children. It’s very relevant to the concept of personal mastery and truly inspiring.

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you they belong not to you
You may give them love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bow from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrow may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable”