I’ve met a lot of people (and got to know them intensely) who seem to not allow themselves to learn new things in specific areas (or maybe a lot of areas), while being proactive in others. Looking at myself, I had a hard time learning and maintaining interest about building physical things, or doing home improvement (all things where I need a hardware shop from).
My theory is that active discouragement during childhood is a driving factor here. My father often yelled at me if I broke something physical, or asked „stupid“ questions while building an RC car together. He also wanted to do all the home improvement stuff alone, and never actively explained anything to me there. So for me, home improvement equals discouragement, resulting in a feeling of I-can‘t-do-that.
(This kind of thing seems to be passed on - my father‘s father also shouted at him when doing something wrong).
On the flipside, my father at some point bought a PC and let me play with it, and seemed to not have any concerns whatsoever about that. He got some floppy disk games for me, installed the office suite, and let me have at it, sometimes grunting encouragement.
Now guess what my favorite activity is, and what I built my career around - home improvement, or computers?
My theory is that active discouragement during childhood is a driving factor here. My father often yelled at me if I broke something physical, or asked „stupid“ questions while building an RC car together. He also wanted to do all the home improvement stuff alone, and never actively explained anything to me there. So for me, home improvement equals discouragement, resulting in a feeling of I-can‘t-do-that. (This kind of thing seems to be passed on - my father‘s father also shouted at him when doing something wrong).
On the flipside, my father at some point bought a PC and let me play with it, and seemed to not have any concerns whatsoever about that. He got some floppy disk games for me, installed the office suite, and let me have at it, sometimes grunting encouragement.
Now guess what my favorite activity is, and what I built my career around - home improvement, or computers?