Importance of Role Models in One’s Life

Importance of Role Models in One’s Life

As the saying goes,”lead by examples” i.e you need to be perfect enough in your efforts or deeds to be taken up as an example by others. Everybody in this world follows one or the other for some act of theirs.

But the question is – who is a role model?

An athlete who has set up an unbreakable world record in his/her game? A famous film star who has played innumerable ideal characters in his movies? A politician who has done various reforms for the upliftment and betterment of the society?

I guess, everybody will have different opinions for selecting a role model for self.

A role model for us, is the one who is perfect in whatever he/she does.

Anybody whom we can look up to or get inspired by, becomes an ideal example to follow. Now, the next question is , if the idol of perfection is a role model, then is it necessary that it would be someone who is rich, famous successful, has fame and has successfully achieved the desired goals in life? Or, a role model can be our next door neighbor, a local grocery vendor, a barber, a cobbler, a salesperson, a shopkeeper, and the list goes on.

Can’t these people become our models of perfect life? If most of the people answer in negative for the above mentioned question, then my argument is – they can’t be role models for our life, just because they either belong to a lower strata of life or simply because they might be somebody ‘in the crowd’, but are nobody ‘over the crowd’. That they are just plain and simple people, just like you and me and all those people who come together to form the society.

There are times when we either out of curiosity read biographies or auto-biographies of famous and successful people. And many a times we are asked to read about them so that we can learn something from their life experiences.

How can we learn from someone else’s experiences? How can we relate with those situations which we haven’t faced? Every individual, every situation is different. Every one’s viewpoints differ from one another. What might sound positive or ideal to one, might not be the same with another.

Since childhood, our brain is channeled to follow the other person. Our parents compare us with our own brothers and sisters, saying, ‘look up to your brother’, ‘try to be like your sister’. ‘You should learn from the hardships of your father’ and so on. In school, our respected teachers also do the same. “If Raman can score well in this subject, why can’t you?” “If Priya can speak so fluently, why are you so shy?” – Learn from them.

Learn from him or learn from her – but nobody says “Learn from yourself”.

As nobody asks us to learn from our own selves – we start looking for people, with whom we can relate to and find their situations similar to ours and hence, we end up believing that they are our role models and in our sub-conscious selves, start following them or imitating them.