From Broken Families to Private Planes

The issue I discuss here is deeply personal to me. Most people in the world have grown up in non-ideal conditions and even those that have grown up in royalty-like lifestyles have a lot to think about when it comes to what the meaning of their lives is all about.

In this article, I write about the challenges of growing up in broken homes or tough conditions and how to go from that to living the life of your dreams whatever that means to you.

When I was younger(about 10) I lost my mom. I did not have the chance to say goodbye to her. She was not sick at all save for the back pain that she had been having since her childhood and for 37 years, she held this pain until the day she went for a routine check-up, one thing led to another and there she was with a lot of blood loss from a failed an unscheduled surgery she got to correct the defect.

I remember getting home in disbelief looking at mom just there placed in a wooden box and her skin so stiff and lifeless. It was not something I had ever seen before and it really hurt me. I was annoyed at the world for not coming home to wish her farewell. Of course, there were so many people at home that day but the ones who didn’t know her still hurt me.

At the time, Thierry Henry who was my role model was playing for Arsenal and I hated him for not coming to bid my mother farewell. Not that he ever knew who my mom was… Probably he’d even never been to my country before. But I was a kid and I had those emotions.

My anger was totally uncalled for and immature but I kept it for a long time. Up to this point, we had lived in a home full of peace and happiness. Over the next 3 years, I was always looking miserable and letting my anger out on my new mom that my dad had got.

You can imagine how damaging my anger was. I always got on my new mom’s wrong side. Constantly stealing things, doing things that I never used to do. She was also not having any of it and she gave me hell as well most of which was mental.

She rarely punished us(my siblings and I ) physically but she always gave us the toughest mental punishments... And these didn’t stop. The things she used to tell me sometimes about how dumb I was and that I would never amount to much were her way of trying to make sure we were always in line and that worked... At least for me.

But during this time, we never saw this mode of doing things as anything but harassment. My grades did suffer as I started to think less of myself. My brother lost his creative spirit as all the electric toys he made for us were being spoiled by our new mom constantly calling him names.

I don’t know why she was so hard on us. I remember the day I left to go for studies in India, I and her were not talking and I didn’t even say goodbye. This at the time did not bother me at all. I remember that as the plane was flying, there was this huge load being lifted from me and I had no regrets about leaving home and flying to another continent. It was bliss.

But in all honesty, I think I was too far gone at that time that it was only a person like her that was able to get me back in line. Getting back in line was good enough but if I needed to move forward, her mode of being a mom was not going to get me there. It was constantly that of telling me how terrible my brain was and I believed it for a long time until it got me expelled from school.

That December after my expulsion, I was so ashamed of myself and disgusted at how low I had become. I had a desire of being a civil engineer, I had promised my late mom that I would become an engineer... How was this ever going to happen if I could not even pass high school physics? I thought to myself.

Then I got a call from one of my uncles that changed my life. He told me that the situation I was in was unfortunate. He said that I should not blame anyone if I am willing to move forward in life. This didn’t make sense at first but then it started making sense when I found a book on mindset and personal development that my dad had randomly bought. I did not read the entire book then but I somehow got the realization that some of us are given better circumstances than others but that does not mean that those that are dealt the wrong hand cant get themselves out of it.

The answer lay in mindset. With this, I was able to not only get my footing back, but it also helped me get admission to one of the finest engineering universities in India for my dream course.. civil engineering.

Most people in the communities where I live have a state of mind where they seem to have given up on life beyond basic survival. Most people do not care about developing themselves. They can list all the factors that are against them but find it nearly impossible to list a few in their favor. The end result is that they resort to nothing but surviving. They bury their dreams and forget about them.

This should never be the case for them, however. If someone is born in less than ideal conditions, it's up to them to reprogram their minds for success. Human beings have amazing potential and we should all embrace that.

Self-love, self-care, self-development are the only ways that can help you move from one point that you don’t like to the point that is full of your greatest dreams.

Today I am a civil engineer and I have achieved a million times more things in my life that have come as a result of shifting my mindset.

As much as our parents mean well, they may sometimes do harm to our mindsets unknowingly just because of the things they tell us we can or cannot do. This is purely something that you can control. Make sure you work on your mind. Read books on self-development, meditate, look up to people who are where you want to be, and most importantly, do not throw your dreams away in exchange for a life of quiet desperation.