“As my grandmother says...”

Surely we have all heard or said this phrase in several situations. Family education is vital in our development; we learns many things from our grandmothers! When we are little boys or girls, we are growing up within a family, which is everything to us. We learn about the world through the eyes of our parents, grandparents, older brothers and sisters; they are our contact with the outside world. Maybe we learn about love, about safety, about fun; but if our relatives have prejudices and stereotypes about people, we inevitabily learn them as well. Family education is vital, also, in the persistance of stereotypes.

Our relatives want the best for us. We have to understand that they, specially our grandparents, grew up in other times, when society was different, and surely there were unacceptable attitudes for them that are normal to us and vice-versa. For example, my grandmother did not kissed my grandfather until they got married, actually they have barely talked to each other! Women who kissed their boyfriends were seen as “used”. On the other hand, it was normal for them to discriminate brown-skinned people calling them “indios”. Some of these old-fashioned ideas were taught to our parents, and may have been taught to us as well.

Although sometimes old-fashioned ideas seem to be better than today's, the truth is that any stereotype can hurt people. More important, they can as well affect the way we see people and may make us lose opportunities to get to know very interesting and valuable human beings. If we get conscious of any thought or feeling that may affect us or others, we should change it, even if itwas learned from our loved ones.

When we are little, we do not have enough experience to disagree with our relatives. What we learn from our family stays deep in our heart and mind; but we can change some of these ideas through critical thinking and reflection. We just need to have our minds open to change.

Stereotypes: Moving minds with movies

Imagine you are in a crowed plaza: it’s about noon, there are people in restaurants for their lunch; couples out the cinema for the matinée; some others in the supermarket. And the, you realize about a group of people all dressed the same, with turbans and weird hats, all over their knees looking in the same direction while proffering words in a strange language. Would you run away? Give the alarm? Or just think about their sacred hour in direction to the Mecca for a Moslem group? Thinking about terrorism when you see Arab people in a land in which there are not even direct contact has in Hollywood movies one of its reasons. 

If we watch carefully must of the action movies, we might recognize a pattern in which the ‘bad guy’ is a foreigner and, among them, Arabians are one of the must recurrent. We can’t think of several reasons for that, but the true is that the effect in people minds is evident: they are dangerous! In early times, Hollywood show us them with a dirty turban, brandish a blade, and conspiring against the good guys; lately, they are showing us almost the same concept, but with modern weapons, so what do they expect from us thinking about them?

Furthermore, when our heroes move to any Arab land, the lifestyle they use to show is the one of a third world country in which men are insensible machist; and women move from belly dancers to submissive uncultured persons. So, it’s in this context in which our heroes are attacked, kidnaped, or even murdered, just because they do not share the same traditions. 

Hence, having films as the only source of information for countries which are far from us in any other way is just enough for creating paradigms if we don’t understand that fiction in movies is not only about the story but also the whole stage in which this story is developed.

Telling a story: Driving lessons

“Learn to drive in a week”… ha! I blame them! Thinking about driving to have your own car and go around as you wish is one of the most recurrent goals in people’s life… and marketing takes advantage of it.

Naïve and young – as I was several years ago – taking a driving course seem the best choice for start driving – and even better if it is an intensive one – but at the end one discovers that the word ‘intensive’ is applied no to the time it takes but for how you feel.

It always starts with the fear of being in front or the driving wheel for the first time – feeling that we overcome by the thought of having our own car. But then, after getting along with the car pedals by pressing them over and over, the fear comes back once again… the fear to crash – and this feeling gets even worse if we think about the security checks: a rod (metallic stick) in the instructor’s hand for pressing the stop pedal in case of emergency!

Well, beating this first impression, and always thinking in the close future, we start driving (or, at least, we think so). Press here, move there, change that, pass over there, stop, accelerate, change road, signal light... not that, the other light!

Day after day, finally we get to the last one. The fifth day (generally on Friday, so we cannot go back to complain after two non-labor days) we have the last round with the instructor and then he says we can now drive by ourselves... what a liar!

It happened to me, as it might happen to anyone else. After having a high self-confidence on my driving skills, the first step, take out the car... fail – why do I think so? Well, placing the taillight in the pipeline can be a good signal to that conclusion.

"But... well... accidents happen... it's a new car, I need to inure to the controls... let's continue driving!" Bad idea! If, after two blocks, you realize that you are driving over the pedestrian side... it is time to stop and think you really do not know how to drive!

So, the advertising should say something like: "You will learn to drive in one week... but we do not guarantee it is going to be in your first week!" I am not pleased to say that I still don't know how to drive.

“Grandparents” having too much free time

In many work places, people are discriminated because of their age when they try to get a job. I think that as we get older, we are unavoidably getting more experiences and more useful skills. However, in Mexico, like in other countries like Argentina and the USA, experience is not always taken into account and “old people” have a lot of problems in order to be hired, despite of the fact that for almost all the jobs, they can work as well as young people. I have to mention that fortunately, it is not in all areas, because biological sciences-public health, theology-religion, education and geography have the highest percentage of hired people older than 45. Nevertheless, for people older than that, in general the unemployment or the difficulty of getting a new job is high.

I think there are some problems they have to confront related to economic issues. One is about health and health benefits. I have heard that some employers are reluctant to hire older workers because they are sure that old people will be more expensive in terms of health benefits due to pains of the age than young people. Moreover, some employers might hesitate to train older workers; they assume that older employees will retire too soon, and fail to give back the employer what he invested on the training. That is not necessarily true because the investment can be retrieved not in a short term, but with time and effort in short term. It is important to know that, for example, most times if they are looking for a job, they do not have little children to take care and have more time to dedicate to the work.

It is also known that some people believe that older people attract more problems than the problems they can solve. For example, employers are always thinking that older people are outdated and some reports mention that 90% of the enterprises do not even permit that people this age be interviewed for the human resources department. In this case the employers do not consider that if those people take some kind of update courses and if it is added the experience (life- and occupational-experience), they could be as productive or more than young people.

Considering the things I mentioned above, it is clear that when people are over 45 years, the difficulty in order to get job becomes larger. On the other hand, it is also it highlighted that for certain situations, there are more advantages in hiring older people and that needs to be soon considered for a better development of the different corporations.

Experience
Experience is what fills our lives, all the things that happen in our lives,
every second, every minute, every action we had made, takes us to
the point what we are today.

Experience is the olny way we have to learn. When we want
to make perfect or improve something, the only wey to do it es by practicing.
For example, when we just learnes how to drive a bike,
we did it very slow, paying attention to some "small" things like not falling,
 or watching every movement we had to do. By practicing we improved
 the way we drive and stopped thinking in those details becouse they just come
 naturaly now, in automate.

Every action we have made in our past, made us what we are now,
we are the result of doing things we like again and again, days of practicing
have made us better in some things.

Success is more than talent

Success is more than talent

Think about your favorite actor. Think now about your favorite singer. What about the winners in the Olympics Games? What do they all have in common? It is that they are pretty good at doing what they do. As we just see them at their prime, we might think they are geniuses… but they are not! Most of the most successful people in the world are the result of their own effort and this apply for all of us.

Taking my own experience to illustrate this point, to talk to an audience was a difficult task, particularly before a specialized public. I would like to tell you that reading the book “Talking in public for dummies” two or three times is a sure bet for success… but I would be a liar. It does not matter how well you know the theory, the first time you do something is always hard (as it is the second, the third, and so on); and, just through experiencing it several times will make us ‘masters’ on the matter. Therefore, we can say that a ‘master’ is a person who has failed so much than he or she cannot fail once again.

In conclusion, when we see these successful people, we should think not only in what they are now, but also in the way they walked to be there and, why not, try to do the same for ourselves.

 

Luis

Tae kwon do experience

When you practice some sport is usually because you like it, but at the age of 12 my father signed me and my brother up for tae kwon do lessons. I didn’t like it ; however as the time passed, I realized that the experience would make me quit or continue practicing. I didn’t like it because I wasn’t good at combat so I thought that the experience will give me knowledge.

At first when I had a lot of combats, most of my classmates were older than me and they usually won. Because of this I got tired of being a loser and I practiced a lot to learn more confidence in myself and after a few months I could win a combat. Then I decided to go to some tournaments, so that I fight with other people that I didn’t know. It worked, I got experience in the combat. Later I left that school and I went to another school, I have a good level in combat now.

My live as a tae kwon do practitioner has taught me experience give us knowledge, confidence and also you can improve our skills, as it happened to me.

Tae-kwon-do experience

When you practice some sport is usually because you like it, but at the age of 12 my father signed me and my brother up for tae kwon do lessons. I didn’t like it ; however as the time passed, I realized that the experience would make me quit or continue practicing. I didn’t like it because I wasn’t good at combat so I thought that the experience will give me knowledge.

At first when I had a lot of combats, most of my classmates were older than me and they usually won. Because of this I got tired of being a loser and I practiced a lot to learn more confidence in myself and after a few months I could win a combat. Then I decided to go to some tournaments, so that I fight with other people that I didn’t know. It worked, I got experience in the combat. Later I left that school and I went to another school, I have a good level in combat now.

My live as a tae kwon do practitioner has taught me experience give us knowledge, confidence and also you can improve our skills, as it happened to me.

Tae-kwon-do experience

When you practice some sport is usually because you like it, but at the age of 12 my father signed me and my brother up for tae kwon do lessons. I didn’t like it ; however as the time passed, I realized that the experience would make me quit or continue practicing. I didn’t like it because I wasn’t good at combat so I thought that the experience will give me knowledge.

At first when I had a lot of combats, most of my classmates were older than me and they usually won. Because of this I got tired of being a loser and I practiced a lot to learn more confidence in myself and after a few months I could win a combat. Then I decided to go to some tournaments, so that I fight with other people that I didn’t know. It worked, I got experience in the combat. Later I left that school and I went to another school, I have a good level in combat now.

My live as a tae kwon do practitioner has taught me experience give us knowledge, confidence and also you can improve our skills, as it happened to me.