Being a Role Model doesn't mean you're perfect

Read The New Paper yesterday and came across an article which after reading, really felt sad for the person involved. For interest, you might be interested in reading it online : http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,4136,160343-1206741540,00.html?

It was about this guy who was a self-made person; he worked his way up from a mere diploma to an MBA in engineering, earning about 4.5k a month and in the end, due to stress from work, became a runner and got caught.

The story covered that he was also a role-model for his siblings. For all his hard work, he threw it out after going the easy way out as a drug addict and as a runner eventually.

After reading it, felt that it wasn't just the man's fault he's gotten into trouble, more likely, its the society's fault for forcing a promising young man into the deep end.

Most of the society's attitude looks at a guy for being strong and tough. That they can handle a lot of stress and can't go to any therapist else they would be look upon as weak.

When a person climbed and gained enough success academically, their attitude is that this person must be rolling in good money, thus pushing the poor chap into stressing themselves with more projects without knowing when to reject or say "no" to more work.

A competitive person also uses his peers as a comparision, to measure how successful they are in life, be it academically, socially, working or even at home, they compare themselves with other people. Then try too hard to conform to the society's idealistic perfection.

An example is Koh ( the guy who was in this reported news ), he strived to be among the tops academically, therefore he upgraded himself and got a MBA. That's because, when we're all young, our parents kept influencing our thoughts and attitude that only those who studied hard and up can get better paying job and if you're the eldest, you'll probably face more pressure to become a role model for your younger siblings. For Koh, my guess is that he is the eldest in the family, as the news reported that he was a role model for his siblings and that he even coached them in their studies. He must have faced a lot of comformities in society and pressure from his family. Which can be broken down into 1 early factor and 2 continuing factors which influenced his attitude, that is parental socialization , reference groups and jeer pressure.

In our text, Breckler et. al. ( p222, 223 & 224 ) had mentioned that parents can influence an infant's behaviour, thoughts and attitude. This is the first factor we faced in this world that shaped our beliefs and attitudes. As we grow older, we are influence by the exposure we face outside , i.e. peer pressure. This is a greater influence than parental pressure as it shapes our identity ourside and influences our attitude to make us feel safe and secure in a group when we share the same attitude as our friends. The third is us fearing being ridicule, therefore we try to conform to the norm.

Koh, like a normal person, fear being ridicule by his peers, so when he faced pressure, he did not admit it to himself and seek help from others or try to let his superior know his stress. He also faced the pressure by his peers in his workplace to perform and not to lose out to them. In the end, he suffered from insomnia and he made his decision to take a banned sleeping drug instead of seeing a psychiatrist. This ultimately made him lost his job and ended up in jail. His attitude seems to have changed after that ; he came a runner which suggested that he may have given up hope on himself which was probably caused by our society's stigma on convicts. As the paper did not cover if he ever tries for any job, but my guess is, being in an Asian family, once you're in jail, there is no future. So, since you're already in big s***, might as well sink further. It also didn't mention about his family giving him suport after he came out of prison, except them being upset with him. So their attitude towards convicts and people who do drugs must be in the bad end, therefore it again influence ( reverse psychology??? , gave up hope on self ?? )and reinforce Koh's attitude towards the world of drugs. Thus causing him to mire into the world of drugs.

Though many people will view it as "he deserves it", I feel kind of sad for him as he could have come out in a different light if he has been open about his stress in the beginning and disappointed about our society's stigma on a person seeing a psychiatrist. Our Asian values on the victims of drugs and the continuity of the chasing of 5Bs.

Though it is good to have stress and to compare ourselves with our peers to gauge our level of achievement, but we have to be more realistic and know our own limits and try to live within our own means without hurting ourselves.

Let us try to be more conscious of when we are feeling the stress and know how to de-stress.

Reference source :

Lim, C. ( 28 March 2008 ) HE CLIMBS ACADEMIC LADDER THEN FALLS , The New Paper

Breckler, S.J., Olson, J.M., Wiggins, E.C ( 2006) Social Psychology ALIVE, Thomson Wadsworth