With the amount of pressure on the youth to do well, there are not so many people with positive values to emulate. There are less and less role models in our immediate environments, what we have is social media and a whole lot of people saying contradicting things. Which begs the question, Who do firstborns emulate?
Firstborn kids are always expected to lead, one way or the other, they bear the weight of parents expectations, siblings expectations, the family as a whole including extended members, curious neighbors, teachers, etc. But only a few amongst those in this list are role models or at least try to be. They are all very good with telling you what you should have done better, always there to call you out whenever you make a mistake, dropping inputs that although sound nice and are likely correct, you don't see them doing it.
When I considered all these things, I thought real hard for possible solutions, I mean, we can't break down just because of an environment that is not empowering us. I decided to come up with solutions for this problem, it has been working for me for a while now and I want to share it.
Choice of path
I believe that at a certain point in a child's life, they start thinking about these things. I looked at these things and I chose to remain positive about it. Choose positivity all the time, it may be harder to stick with, but it pays off sooner or later. I decided to pay close attention to all the bad examples in my environment, all the people who are supposed to be role models but are not, then I noted all their behaviors down and chose to not be like them. I realized that if I wanted good examples and what I have is bad examples, then doing the opposite of what I had was sure to pay off.
Social media sieve
There is nothing to be done about the excessive information on the internet. So what do we do? I specifically chose content that would teach me, humor me, expose me, groom me and empower me. I refuse to watch things that go against what I want for myself. There may be a popular influencer that has everyone crazed. When I check them out and I don't connect with the values they give out, I immediately disconnect myself.
The trick is not to drown in the turbulence of the excessive information and pull of social media, using it as a tool that it is, keeps you in control, even though that may be hard.
Know yourself
Firstborns will have to lead, one way or the other, running away from that responsibility doesn't fulfill, therefore, go on a journey of self discovery, what kind of person do you want to be, what kind of person do you want to be followed for, remembered for, known for. Take out time and go through your value system, you may not be privileged to have someone do it for you, but life isn't fair and doesn't care, learn to take care of yourself.
Knowing yourself and who you want to be makes you live a certain way and it forces life to respond to you differently which sieves out friends that don't resonate with you by default.
Lastly, even though it is very difficult and we naturally don't like submitting to authority, we do have to submit, it makes life choices easier to make, prevents you from making some mistakes and keeps you ahead. So, get yourself a MENTOR, even if you have to search the whole earth.
The penitself.
