Hello my dear listeners and welcome back to the Kapil Gupta Career Pot Show. And today I want to take you back many years, before Instagram, before WhatsApp, before Google answered every question, and before YouTube taught us mathematics, cooking, meditation, coding, and apparently even how to become a millionaire before breakfast. Now there was another very powerful information system. Our family. And that system gave us hundreds of messages. Study hard, otherwise you'll become nothing. Lukyaka henge. Be a good girl. Boys don't cry. Don't answer back to elders. Money is very difficult to earn. Arts may scope nahi hai. Take a safe career. Don't take unnecessary risks. First become successful, then enjoy life. Most of these messages were not given with bad intentions. Many taught us wonderful things discipline, respect, responsibility, hard work, saving money, caring for family. But sometimes a child hears one sentence repeatedly and creates a completely different rule inside their mind. Work hard becomes, if I'm not achieving, I am worthless. Be a good girl becomes, I must keep everyone happy. Boys don't cry becomes if I show pain, I am weak, and money is difficult to earn becomes, I must always be afraid of losing money. And choose a safe career can become, I should never take a career risk, even if I am miserable. Childhood ends. The rule stays, and that is what today's episode is about. Childhood messages we still carry. And perhaps the most important questions you can ask yourself is which childhood message is still making decisions for the adult abbecome? So hi, I'm Kabil Gupta, and my mission is to help people discover their true potential and create lives of purpose and fulfillment. As a human potential mentor, graphing therapist, and founder of Study Abroad Academy, I've spent over two decades helping students, parents, and professionals gain clarity, confidence, and direction. Because the future doesn't change when you choose a different career. It changes when you become a better version of yourself. So now let's meet someone. Her name is Ananya. Ananya is 12. She brings home her report card. 95%. The house becomes a mini celebration. Mother calls Nani, father tells his colleague, one uncle receives the information even though nobody remembers asking him. Perhaps even the neighborhood gets an unofficial press release. Aranya got 95%. Aranya feels wonderful. The next examination comes. 82%. Suddenly the energy changes. What happened? You're doing so well. Why have your marks dropped? Look at Sharmaji's daughter. Now nobody sits Aranya down and deliberately says, Beta, your value as a human being depends on your marks. Of course not. But a child's brain may create its own equation. Achievement is equal to approval and slowly becomes achievement is equal to worth. Fast forward 15 years, Aranya is now a successful professional. She works hard, gets promoted, takes responsibility. Everybody calls her ambitious. There is one problem. She cannot rest. Sunday afternoon comes and there's nothing urgent to do. Her body wants rest. Her mind says, You are wasting time. She opens a laptop. Why? Maybe she is genuinely ambitious, but maybe an old equation is still operating. If I'm not achieving something, what value do I have? Now this is not simply imagination. Research on what psychologists call conditional parental regard has found links with contingent self-esteem, where self-worth rises and falls depending on whether we meet expectations. And think about how strongly this can affect career decisions. You score well in science, so everybody says you must become an engineer. You get into a prestigious college, so leaving a career you dislike feels like failure. You earn a good salary, so changing direction feels foolish. And suddenly career is not only work, it has become proof that you are worthy. And that is a very heavy job for any career to perform. And now imagine another young person. His name is Rahul. Rahul is good at commerce. He enjoys business. He loves analyzing brands. He can spend hours understanding why one company succeeds and another fails. But Rahul's father always wanted an engineer in the family. Nobody threatens Rahul. Nobody is cruel. Her father simply says things like, engineering gives you security. Engineering has respect. After engineering, you can do anything. Rahul hears another message underneath. A good son should not disappoint his parents. So he chooses engineering. First year, manageable. Second year, boring. Third year, painful. By fourth year, Rahul is secretly watching marketing videos while preparing for technical placements. And now comes the interesting part. Rahul knows what interests him, but he cannot act. Because the decision is no longer do I prefer engineering or marketing inside him. The decision feels like, do I choose myself or hurt my parents? Now that is a childhood message influencing an adult career choice. Respecting parents is beautiful. But respect and surrendering every personal decision are not the same thing. Your parents deserve honesty and you deserve ownership of the life you eventually have to live. So now let us talk about another message. Many Indian girls have grown up hearing. Be a good girl. Nothing wrong with that sentence. The real question is: what did good mean in that home? Do not argue. Help everyone. Do not make others uncomfortable. Be polite. Put family first. Don't be too demanding. Don't say no. Imagine Priya grows up with this room. At 28, she's brilliant at work. Her manager gives her extra assignments. She says yes. Her colleagues ask her to help complete their presentation. Yes. Someone schedules a meeting during her personal time. Okay. She's offered a promotion, but needs to negotiate salary, and suddenly she becomes uncomfortable. What if they think I'm greedy? She deserves more, but asking for more feels bad. Another opportunity requires moving to another city. Her first thought is not, is this right for my career? It is what will everyone else feel. Please notice how a childhood rule can quietly end to professional life. The rule is no longer be kind. It has become never make anyone uncomfortable, even if you keep making yourself uncomfortable. Kindness is beautiful. People pleasing is exhausting. Boundaries do not make a caring person uncaring. Sometimes saying no to others is how we finally say yes to our own life. Now let us talk about boys. A six-year-old boy falls while playing. He cries. Someone affectionately says, Aray, boys don't cry, be strong. He stops. Everybody moves on. Thirty years later, life hits much harder than that childhood fall. Career pressure, EMI, relationship problems, aging parents, fear of losing a job, loneliness, failure. And someone asks, Are you okay? He smiles. Oh absolutely fine. His face says fine. His sleep says otherwise. Maybe the childhood lesson was not simply be strong. Maybe the rule became, if I admit I'm struggling, I am weak. And this can damage careers too. A student is confused about refusing counseling. A professional is overwhelmed but will not speak to a mentor. A founder is drowning but keeps pretending everything is under control. Someone needs help, but thinks asking for it proves incompetence. It does not. See, strength and silence are not the same thing. Strong people ask for information. Strong people seek mentoring. Strong people consult experts, and strong people can say, I don't know. Sometimes the strongest career move is admitting I need guidance. And then we have our money messages. How many of us heard money doesn't grow on trees? Don't waste money. These messages often taught responsibility. Excellent. But sometimes the message became spending money on myself is wrong. Imagine a student considering a useful certification, 20,000 rupees. They hesitate for six months. During those six months, they spend 300 here, 500 there, food delivery, subscriptions, and random purchases. They're not unwilling to spend. They feel guilty when the spending is directly on their growth. Or consider someone who chooses only the cheapest college without asking whether it creates the right career opportunity. Saving money is wise, but fear is not financial planning. There's another money message too. Good people should not care too much about money. And then someone feels embarrassed negotiating salary or charges too little for their professional work or remains underpaid because asking for fair compensation feels selfish. Money is neither automatically good nor automatically bad. It's a resource. Financial maturity means learning how to earn, save, invest, and spend responsibly. Not carrying a guilt every time money enters the conversation. So now let us come to perhaps India's most famous childhood message. You want to change subjects? Lokyaka henge? Drop a year, Lokyaka henge. Leave engineering, lokyaka henge, take finance, lokyaka henge, start a business, lokyaka henge. At some point we should probably ask, who exactly are these lobes and why do they have so much voting power? Imagine Kavya wants to study animation. She's talented, she's already built a small portfolio, but relatives keep saying, animation is my career hota. So she chooses a conventional degree she does not enjoy. Three years later, the same relatives are busy discussing someone else's child. Kavya is still living with the decision. People may discuss your decision for three days. You may live with it for 30 years. Now that does not mean ignoring wise advice. It means distinguishing between guidance and social fear. A good career decision should consider aptitude, interest, personality, opportunity, money, lifestyle, and long-term growth. People may talk should not be the main career assessment tool. And now I want to be careful here. You're not a helpless product of childhood. Not every sentence your parents said became a lifelong belief. And one comment at age seven does not automatically explain everything you do at 37. Human beings are far more complex. Genes matter, experiences matter, teachers matter, friends matter, culture matters, later experiences matter, your own choices matter. But science does tell us something fascinating. Early experiences help shape the developing brain. Harvard's center on the developing child says that in the first few years of life, more than one billion new neural connections can form every second. Think about that. Childhood is a powerful period of learning. But here's the hopeful part. New connections can still form throughout life. In simple words, what you learned early can influence you. It doesn't have to imprison you. You can update. And that brings us to my favorite metaphor from this entire conversation. Are you running old emotional software? Your phone updates regularly. Sometimes it updates at the worst possible time. System update available? Not now. But somehow many of us upgrade our phones every year while running emotional software installed when we were eight. You are 35. Software says never disappoint anyone. You are 40. Software says rest is laziness. You are 22. Software says, if I fail once, everyone will think I'm useless. You are 50, and software says strong, people never ask for help. Growing older happens automatically. Updating internal rules does not. We have to do that consciously. And updating does not mean blaming your parents. Your parents were carrying messages from their childhood too, and their parents before them. Some rules made sense in another time. Choose security may have come from families that knew financial struggle. Don't waste food may have come from scarcity, and study hard may have been the family's best known path to mobility. Today is not about putting up parents on trial. It's about asking, does this rule will serve the life I'm building? So let me share the five sentences that may change what you see. Yes, five. If you want, please note them down. So tonight, open a notebook, finish these sentences honestly. Growing up, I learned that success means to complete the sentence. Let me say that again. Growing up, I learned that success means complete it. Second, love means complete it. Third, a good person should be able to complete the sentence. Fourth, money is to complete the sentence. And fifth and last, showing emotion is and complete it. Do not try to give impressive answers, give automatic answers. Those are more interesting. Maybe you write, success means being better than everyone else. Ask where that came from. Maybe a good person always helps. Good. Then ask, does always helping mean never having boundaries? Or maybe money is difficult. So ask, is that still a fact or an old fear? Or maybe showing emotion is weakness. So ask whether you would teach that exact rule to a child you love today. That question is powerful. Would I teach this exact belief to a child I love? If the answer is no, perhaps it's time for an update. Write the new rule. Old rule is I must always be strong. The new rule, I can be capable and still ask for support. The old rule can be good people keep everyone happy. But the new rule can be I can care about people without becoming responsible for everyone's happiness. Old rule can be failure means I'm not good enough. The new rule should be failure gives me information about what to change. Old rule, rest is laziness. But the new rule, rest helps me continue doing meaningful work. Old rule can be my career must impress people. With the new rule, my career must fit the person who has to live it. And that last one may change someone's life. Maybe one of the privileges of growing older is that eventually we get to become the adult who speaks to the child still living somewhere inside us. And perhaps that child needs to hear. You do not have to earn love through Marx. You do not have to make everybody happy to be a good person. You do not have to hide pain to prove strength. You do not have to choose a prestigious career to prove your worth. You do not have to carry every rule simply because you learned it early. Honoring your upbringing does not mean carrying every belief forever. We can keep the wisdom, respect, responsibility, hard work, family, discipline, and still update the rules that no longer fit. Because growing up should not only mean getting older, sometimes growing up means finally deciding which lessons deserve to come with us. So here is my challenge for you today. Identify one childhood rule that still influences your decisions. Do not fight it, do not shame yourself, do not blame your family. Simply notice it. Thank it for whatever purpose it once served, and then ask, do I still need you? So if the answer is no, write a new rule. For the next seven days, practice one action that supports the new belief. If your old rule says, never say no, say one respectful no. If it says failure is shameful, try something where success is not guaranteed. If it says, I must please my parents, have an honest conversation about your career. If it says asking for help is weakness, speak with the mentor. Because a new belief becomes powerful when you start giving it a new evidence. And if you're a student or career aspirant listening today and you realize that your career choices are being driven more by family expectations, marks, comparisons of fear than by clarity, this is exactly where career counseling can help. Through my career counseling program, I help students understand their strengths, interests, aptitude, personality, values, and future possibilities. We do not only ask which career has scope, we ask whose voice is choosing this career, yours, or an old message you have been carrying for years. That distinction matters because the purpose of career clarity is not rebellion against your family, it's conscious decision making. Your dream career was never lost. It may simply be buried under expectations, fears, and old rules that were written before you were old enough to question them. So let us decode it together. So this is Kapil Gupta, you know, listening to the Kapil Gupta career portion. Let me leave you with this thought today. We cannot choose every message that entered our minds as children. But as adults, we can choose which messages are allowed to stay. Keep the wisdom, update the fear, and give yourself publishing right next to yourself.