Three Powerful Keys for Success I Learned From my Badass Grandmother.

If you ever crossed my grandmother on the street, you probably would not have seen her. She was 4’11’, reserved, and soft-spoken. And yet, the only word I can use to describe this tiny woman is magnificent. Born in a village in the mountainous coffee region of Colombia, orphaned at a young age and educated only to the fifth grade, she refused to play the hand that life had dealt her. Tata (her nickname) was not one to pontificate, but she was always ready to listen and educate if you approached her. I learned many lessons from this fantastic woman; here, I want to share the three keys to success that made the most significant impact in my life.

1.Know your limitations so you can overcome them.

All through her younger years, my grandmother’s life seemed to be nothing but limitations. In her own words:

I felt like I was going through the world wearing a blindfold. I knew there was something more to life than that tiny town and my small world. I knew it, even though I couldn’t see it.

Armed with little knowledge but a lot of logic, the first limitation she set to overcome was the number of children she would have. That in itself was a significant act of courage, given that she lived in a strict Catholic society in a time when contraception was practically inexistent. Using any household trick available, grandma limited her progeny to three children. When the town priest pulled her aside and told her that she was forbidden to attend mass until she was pregnant again, grandma forfeited the church. To her, the threat of hell was not too different from the prospect of bearing ten or fifteen children and watch them starve. She kept her link to God a private matter, praying alone in her room whenever she wanted.

The following limitation she set up to eliminate was her lack of education, bringing us to the second lesson she taught her children and grandchildren.

2.Your mind is your mightiest weapon.

Grandma set then to raising her three kids, making their education an absolute, non-negotiable priority, hoping they would never feel plagued by ignorance the way she did. When her relatives insisted that she had to train my mother to become a seamstress like herself, grandma dismissed them, asserting that her daughter would attend college. Many years later, Tata confessed to me that at the time, she didn’t really understand what a college was, only that education had to be the way out of their limiting existence. After years of hard work and perseverance, the family moved to the city so my mother and uncles could attend high school. Eventually, all of them graduated from Medical School.

Her duty fulfilled, tata set up to improve herself. She found a night school, sign herself up, stuck with it, and finally got a high school diploma. After that, this relentless woman attended a public university, taking a few credits at a time for years until she completed a degree in Philosophy. She was the one who taught me about Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; every time I entered her room, a copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy beamed at me from her bookshelf. The woman I grew up with was far from the uneducated child who dreamed of a life beyond the coffee plantations: the world was her oyster.

3.Set boundaries

Even at a young age, without anyone to teach her, my grandmother learned that establishing clear boundaries was the only way to survive in the meddlesome small-town society where she grew up. The first act of assertion she had a memory of happened when she was about ten years old. She shared a room with a sister that was louder, nastier, and unbeatable at arguing. Grandma was quiet, calm, a wallflower. One time, the sister bullied grandma into switching beds because she was not happy with hers. At first, Tata didn’t know what to do, so she complied with the sister’s forceful command. But the other bed didn’t feel like her own, and after a couple of nights of crying herself to sleep, she took decisive action. Knowing that she would never win in a verbal argument, this small girl went to the sewing room, grabbed a rigid cardboard tube that used to hold fabrics, went back to the bedroom, and hit the sister in the head with it.

“Get off. That’s my bed,” Tata said unapologetically, while the stunned sister quickly nodded and obeyed.

Other times, grandma set clear boundaries when it was evident that other people’s lack of reliability could thwart her goals. She liked to say, “better blushing for a minute than pale for the rest of my life,” meaning that it was better to speak your truth clearly than to beat around the bush trying to protect other people’s feelings. One clear example was the time when she decided to enroll back in school. Grandpa, who was quickly excited about everything but not one to follow through with plans, tried to join the party.

“I’ll go with you!” he enthused.

“No, you won’t. I’m doing this alone,” Tata replied.

“Why?” he asked, disappointed and a bit upset.

“Because you will get bored and quit, dragging me with you.”

That was harsh but also true. Grandpa was a lovely man, but he was, well, flaky. He did not insist, did not go on his own and sign himself up for the classes, did not overcome that one conversation to get what he wanted. He simply forwent the idea because it was not really important to him. The subject didn’t cause a chasm between them, and he probably forgot about it by dinner time.

Tata has been gone for a few years now, yet her strength hovers around me like a protective angel. Every time I feel scared, uncertain, or doubtful, I remember that whatever I’m planning to do would pale in comparison to everything she was able to pull off with nothing but her wits and her perseverance. All I can hope for is to be carved from the same stone as she was, unrelenting and unbreakable.