Pier Pressure

When you think of peer pressure, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? For me, I see in my mind all my friends, the people I hang out with on the weekends, the ones I see every day at school. When you think of pier pressure, do you generally think of it as a positive or a negative thing? For me, I usually think of it as a negative thing. I do not think I have a lot of pier pressure in my life because of this, but when I thought about it more, I realized my life is full of it, full of positive pier pressure. 

My family creates the greatest amount of pier pressure in my life. Just one example would be my brother...

My older brother is crazy. He walked into his ACT test and got a thirty-four hands down the first time. All I can remember is thinking “whoa,” but when I talk to him about he says “I wish I had gone back and taken it again, I should have been able to get that perfect score.” My brother is one of a very few people I know who seems to be good at everything without even trying. But when I sit down and talk with him, I realize he is never happy with his performances, he sees how he can improve, and is always working towards perfection. But he challenges me to keep working hard, and to always find something to improve on. When I had received my ACT score back the first time, he called me up to see how I did. It was not a happy number. Instead of saying “Yeah, that sucks” he said “Well go take it again!”, and this continued as I retook, the test three more times before getting the score I needed. He has taught me to always have higher expectations for myself, and never fails to call me up every now and then to make sure I am still working hard. 

I listen to kids on campus talk about all the things they are up to, the party last weekend, the guy they met the other day and things got out of hang with...and I realized how blessed I am to have such a strong family base that would kick my butt if I did anything dumb. 

Perhaps the problem is not that there is too much negative pier pressure out there, but that we do not use the positive pier pressure to balance it out. It is not too often that I hear from friends what good relationships they have with the people in their family, especially with parents. The usual narration is: “yeah, my mom and I don't get along very well...”, “I really don't spend much time at home, it's boring.” I find this sad; the home is where one should be a place of support, learning, encouragement, and urging forward. Many times this is what keeps me going, something I know I can always fall back to.

So enough about all that negative pier pressure, where do you get your positive pier pressure?