In my travels around the country, speaking primarily to high school students about the Rich Habits and Poor Habits, I’ve noticed a trend.
Typically, eight students out of an average class of forty took me up on my offer for the free books I gave out after every talk. Those eight students seemed genuinely interested in learning about my research in order to improve their lives.
The remaining thirty-two students could care less about improving their lives through my research.
In both cases, parents were the reason why. Good Mentor Parents and Bad Mentor Parents, more specifically.
Good Mentor Parents are parents who mentor their children to succeed in life. They teach their children good habits. They inspire and motivate their children to achieve. And society benefits.
Bad Mentor Parents are parents who are not good mentors to their children. They teach their children bad habits or habits that contribute to poverty.
Bad Mentor Parents come in many flavors.
- Parents addicted to drugs or alcohol.
- Parents who are in and out of jail.
- Parents who eschew their responsibilities as parents or abandon their children.
- Toxic parents who are negative and pessimistic about life.
- Parents who are just evil or cruel to their children.
- Parents who don’t know any better. These are typically parents raised in a poor household themselves and, as a result of their upbringing, forged bad habits that they then pass along to their children.
When both parents fail to do their job of raising self-reliant, responsible, law-abiding children – children society needs in order for society to function properly – their children become society’s problem. Society is left to clean up the mess of Bad Mentor Parents.
I learned from the 177 self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits study, that the cure for Bad Mentor Parenting was to grow your way out of it through formal education, self-education and by finding success mentors in life.
Just ask Dr. Ben Carson. He was raised in the ghettos of Detroit. His father abandoned him, his mom and his brother Curtis, when Carson was just eight years old. But thanks to a his amazing mom, Carson and his brother were forced by their mom to read every day. This eventually became a daily habit that followed both into their adult years.
Carson went on to become a top neurosurgeon. His brother, Curtis, also excelled in life as an aeronautical engineer.
Success is not an accident. It’s a process. And parents are a big part of that process.
Poverty is not an accident. It’s a process. And parents are also a big part of that process.
About Thomas C. Corley
Speak Your Mind