What To Do When Your Parents Don’t Support Your Dream Career

Sometimes you have to hurt your loved ones when doing the right thing.

It is inspiring to hear success stories of people who started their business initially from the family.

When you also have the family support in the starting, your career takes off swiftly. Well, some people fall on the other side and struggle a lot to establish trust with the previous generation folks.

Building trust takes time, sometimes years.

My elder brother has reached a high level of understanding with dad in his career choice in the past two months. But it didn’t build soon. It took almost seven years of multiple trust issues!

We, three people, make the family: me, brother and Dad. So now you know how natural it is for us to back off if our argument is not reasonable because our dad asks for a valid one every damn time. If we don’t have it, then the case will end before even escalating.

It was our story whenever we tried to explain to dad about our career decision. We don’t have a mother ( she passed away 15 years ago ) to seek a soft response. We directly jump to the topic.

Sometimes it is fight or flight. Yes, our dad was stern a few years back. It took him a lot of time to appreciate our way of life. He is still not entirely there. But the situation is improving.

They don’t want us to take risks because they know resilience is not a joke.

Here is the mentality that our parents expect from us, which doesn’t align if our thinking is radical: they don’t want (for safety purpose) us to take risks in life. Especially if their lot of risks turned out disastrous in their 20s ( or whenever was their hard time ). They want us to follow this typical path:

study
study more until you have no more college degrees left in your honour
if done with academia, they will even push you for government services ( it is just a choice. Otherwise, the entire youth would be doing it, right? )
get a job with stable income where it doesn’t matter how hard you work, you will get the same salary as every other cog at the same seniority level until your promotion after a long time.
earn lots of money, obviously
marry
reproduce
DIE

Did you see how quickly I ended the list after the job criteria? Because that is what happens when you don’t forge your path.

Your life will be uninteresting. Try re-reading the list for once. You will see how boring it sounds. If you want to show your uniqueness, then you won’t follow the above list.

The problem with the safe route

“Don’t listen to your parents.” — Brian Chesky, CEO, Airbnb

While following what everyone is doing, you will end up like everyone, just with your personal touch of monotony. At one time, you will feel like you’re living a humdrum life.

At least when you’re in your 20s and have the freedom to decide for yourself, you will want to do things differently if you have an experimental mindset of success through learning. It is almost impossible to flow with this independent attitude if your parents don’t support your decision.

My father ( and every parent in a typical middle-class family in India ) gives examples of people who have succeeded by following the safe route. The most common slang at their disposal, “My friend’s son did this. My coworker’s niece is studying abroad. My colleague’s grandson is in an MNC.”

But it is just one angle that my father sees. When I try to show examples of people who changed the status quo by following the unconventional route, I see an imaginary spear in his hand. Either he would choke me, or I will do it myself because I have to save my ass from his anger. The obstacle is the way now! What to do? I am sweating a river!

You have to live your purpose anyway.

You can’t live in cold-blooded denial for long. Ignoring other people is relatively easy, but when the resistance comes from the family, especially the strict parent, you have a low chance of success.

This one was the case for my brother. When he was in 10th standard itself, my father sent him to Kota to prepare for IIT-JEE without even asking what he wanted to do.

The plan was to hustle in Kota for two years to get into an IIT, the prestigious engineering institutes in India. But my brother came back home in almost 1.5 years. Dad even asked, “Why don’t you like to study for God sake? You have wasted so much money and time in Kota. Please, say something!”. My brother’s answer was not appealing, but it was plain honest. He said, “I want to start my business.”

My father rejected right away. Before starting his business in April this year, my brother had to spend almost seven years in denial doing what he dreaded. He pursued diploma instead of a bachelors degree, prepared for several government services exams just because our dad said so.

He tried hard to follow dad’s instructions. He is 26 years old. The first time he opened up to dad, he was 20. He was trying something on his own, and when he finally found his interest in stock markets, he started learning almost two years back.

He knew he couldn’t convince dad because of so many trust issues between them. He also knew he couldn’t ask me to talk to dad because I can only explain so much about something I don’t practice myself.

Eventually, my brother had to stand up for himself. He had to do it the way I stood up when I wanted to do things my way and my father didn’t agree.

But he chose the silent path and made time for his passion instead: investing in the stock markets. He became a portfolio manager, faced severe losses before reaching the profitable stage he is right now with a healthy client base.

Dad only indeed saw the growth stage a few months back. And now my dad is giving support more than even my brother wanted in the first place.

When I heard from my brother that our dad had invested INR 2 lakhs in his business, I almost cried that day because I had been taking responsibility to level them on the same page every time I went home.

My hard work has finally paid off. The trust is back and the euphoria is real!

Show them your path is right for you.

When you have the domain knowledge, people listen to you. I mean, they carefully listen and learn. You can even make a living by doing what you love.

Just find the right platform and do the work. The deserving audience will find you. The same thing happened in my brother’s case.

Before starting his business a few months back, my brother used to work in hiding in the home. I can’t live even a single day like this. If someone does not understand my work, I do two things:

either make them understand and agree with me. It’s hard to do when they are fed with so many obsolete ideas from society, or
create an environment where they can’t disturb you and show the results when the time is right.

I have always followed the second approach from the starting because every time I try the first approach, the generation gaps becomes a problem and my dad doesn’t even give a shit about what I want to say. Instead, I work and show him the results.

That is what I am doing now with my blogging career. My father didn’t show his support initially, but time changes everyone. My perseverance changed ( although maybe slightly ) his view about blogging as a career. I can’t wait for the day when I will add “blogger” as a profession in my resume.

My brother tried the first approach and failed. Based on so many trust issues between them, he barely stood up since he told dad about the business idea first time seven years ago when he came back from Kota.

He wanted to answer dad’s every question, but he just couldn’t build confidence.

Give yourself some credit for severe efforts.

Me being an IITian, they will listen. I have the most successful and smooth career in the family. I know what it takes to build that: impacting people’s lives by doing what you love.

Here is how I stepped up to fix my dad’s reaction. I tried for almost one year. If not financially, then at least emotional support is a must for a child to flourish.

It was one of the reasons why I used to go home for just a few days, and they knew it. One week was the maximum duration I stayed at home every time. It is because when I failed to bring them on the same page without any reconciling efforts from their side, I felt like a leader without a team.

The reason is gone now. In April, even my dad invested in my brother’s firm. My brother opened an office where he lives ( both live together ) because he loves his hometown and wants to improve the financial literacy there. He is doing noble work. He is earning money by doing what he loves.

Now I can’t wait to go back home and watch them have healthy conversations. It has been a long time since I have seen that. More than seven years, I mean.

Sometimes it feels like a movie with me being the hero. Well, I take credit for it. I worked my ass off to bring them on the same page.

It has worked, and since I am also learning to invest in the stock markets, I will join his firm too.

Takeaways

Your career is important to you. Even if your family and friends don’t support, you only have to explain to the ones who matter: your family.

If you are transparent with your decisions and they understand your perspective, you’ve hit gold here. You are unstoppable!

But when they can’t understand, and you have tried everything to make them, the only way is to follow your passion anyway with as less distraction as possible. It can even get so intense while working in hiding that you may have to leave the house.

My brother even ran so many times away from home. But he learned to live the way that makes sense: stay home, do your work, shine, turn the heads and change the lives of people around you.

The biggest challenge for my brother was to change my father’s viewpoint. I don’t know how he did it, but I know one thing: I had something to do with it because whichever the new path you choose, you only have to explain your point to the people who matter. Here I became the emotional healer, or you can say the communication wizard. And if they don’t understand, have patience, do your work anyway, and show them the astonishing results at the right time. They will burst into happy tears! The moment will be legendary!

This blog belongs to a series of posts I am publishing in this 100-days streak. Today is day 77. Navigate to the end of article 22, for the references from day 23 onwards. If you would like to read the ones before day 22, here is the first one that documents them in the end.

~ Sanjeev