We all strive in our life to achieve our desired goal and it is presumed that our success is based on our internal motivation, hard work, dedication, smart work and most importantly fate but what about the environment that we live in? Our environment or society we live in plays a very crucial part in many aspects of life. Just as the both statements, personality is innate, personality is influenced by environment, are considered true, same is the case with success. Only a single factor cannot make us successful in life. Success is both intrinsically and extrinsically determined. Let us have a look at some most important societal factors that can both positively and negatively affect our journey towards success.
Role of Parents
Parents are considered as the very first teachers of children. Before going to any school or any training institute, the parents are the ones that can mould their children into any shape of personality. They train them from zero. They are the ones to give basic concepts to their children which later on become beliefs. A good parenting style positively influences the life of children and ultimately provides a way towards children leading successful lives. Authoritative parenting followed by nurturing and providing a supportive environment yet a set of rules to be followed by children is considered to be the best parenting style. Children brought up with this type of parenting makes them more self-reliant and higher self-esteem in their adult life.
Authoritarian parenting involves forceful behavior and punitive styles which makes children dependent and induces insecurities about one’s own self. Permissive parents make no boundaries to children which causes them to forget abiding by laws and involvement in criminal activities.
Psychology is full of early childhood life impacts on adult life which is directly related to parenting received. There must be parental training programs arranged for couples before or even after having a child.
Role of other Family members
In individualistic cultures like western culture, there may be little or no impact of one’s own or extended family members on one’s success. But in collectivistic culture like in Pakistan, family has a huge impact. There are many common things in desi households which directly makes an impact on one’s unique abilities. The most common thing is comparison between grades of children has the most negative impact as it totally neglects the individual abilities of a child that directly affects its self-esteem and motivation to fulfil his goals. A stigma like forcing a child with good grades to go for typical fields of medicine or engineering considering it to be the only highly paid profession can might produce a large number of doctors or a handsome amount of money but it for sure refrains children pursuing their dream degree, a degree of their own choice and most importantly diminishing their decision-making ability for future dealings. They are most likely to consider themselves dependent on others for their decisions.
Moreover, a supportive family environment encourages one to keep struggling even after failure, which creates a sense of social support in the person and motivates him to give his best.
Role models
We all idealize successful people in our life. Ideals are the perfect examples of success in front of us. It is very important whom we idealize, what are their characteristics, how they get successful, what their story is. In order to be successful we follow the pathways of our ideal and their journey leads our path to success, their character shapes ours, they are role models.
One must be very precise in choosing their role model as we mostly ignore the bad things of our favorite people. We may also start rationalizing the bad things of our role models which definitely can lead us to follow their wrong pathways. For example, a person might idealize a successful business person to follow his path and earn money, while on the very other hand we can take an example of a person taking interest in gamblers and gambling considering it a shortcut to earn money.
Role of Educational Systems
The environment of educational systems plays an important role in developing children’s behavior. It is very important to keep our educational environment in better conditions with rules and regulations followed by staff and students equally. Schools must be well organized and managed as their culture affects the achievements and failures of a child. If the school environment is very strict it may give tense competition and give anxiety to low achievers while environments with motivation and proper attention gives children motivation for productivity and giving their best. It is also observed in research that school culture plays an important role in the academic achievement and motivations of students. For students, the school culture means previous and present achievements of the school, circle of friends, school uniforms and social activities.
If schools pay attention towards balancing the studies and extracurricular activities it will develop children with complete personalities. A balance of attention for high and low scorers with extra attention to who cannot perform well is needed. Sometimes low scorers have problems in understanding concepts and the lack of attention makes them hopeless and they stop trying.
Further education systems with all facilities and equipment are very important for students. A student from elite class school is able to perform well and has an attractive personality while a student from low class government school doesn’t even have basic knowledge about random things.
Properly developed school is a major role player in student’s future life success and failure in their respective careers.
Moreover proper career counselling from educational systems help students choose the right path of their interest which will make them shine bright in the field of their interests.
Role of Peer Groups
It is said that “a man is known by the company he keeps” Peer group has been found to have a significant impact on student’s academic achievement. Students who are members of academically successful groups tend to have higher grades andtest scores than students who are not members of academically successful groups.
It is a fact known that students who care about learning are more likely to associate with peers who share similar interests in learning and are curious about gaining knowledge. When a person gets attached to the negative peer group it influences him and he starts adopting bad habits in the name of coolness. He may get into drug addiction or many antisocial behaviors.
A good decision in making friends directly smoothes the way to a successful life.
Role of Socio-economic status
Socio-economic status is also very important and a supporting factor for an individual in his success journey. He may be deprived of various things and not able to achieve various offers, not being told about any opportunity due to his lower socio- economic status.
Research has shown over and over again that there is a strong link between socio-economic standing and academic success. Several studies (Sirin, 2005; Reardon, 2011; OECD, 2019) have found that students from higher socio-economic backgrounds have better life and career than their friends from lower backgrounds in terms of test scores, grades, and education. Different countries and educational systems have seen these differences in how well people do in school based on their socio-economic standing.
Education is widely recognized as a critical factor influencing an individual’s social and economic success, as it provides a pathway to improved opportunities and a better quality of life (OECD, 2020).
The government is totally responsible for providing equal growth opportunities to talented individuals irrespective of their socio-economic status so that everyone gets equal opportunities to make successful decisions in life.
Role of Work environment
It is very important in which environment an individual is working. Individual may be working in a friendly and supporting environment with friendship with all colleagues or he may be working in a tense and highly competitive environment which may break his mental health and affect his productivity so it is very important for our success that which working environment we have.
Conclusion
Although as this article has explained that many social factors play a crucial role in the determination of success or failure of a person, I believe that this does not take control of life away from a person’s determination. Having a better understanding of these social factors, gives a person the ability to break away the psychological barriers that were created in his mind through his past interactions with the society. A person by learning how social factors influence people’s behavior can not only re-think the way he interacts with his society, but also make him change his behavior as someone playing different social roles in other people’s life in order to make positive changes in the lives of other people as well. Therefore, a person with firm belief in his/her abilities and sheer determination can face these difficulties with the strength of dreams to achieve success.
