an interview with Arran Stewart
I grew up in a working class town in the UK called Luton; my mother was a housewife and my father was a civil engineer. Sadly, I don’t have too many positive things to say about my childhood, other than the experiences I went through shaped me into the person I am today. This has thankfully been a positive for both me and my children.
I know what its like to be poor and lack opportunity. It chafed at me that things could be so unfair and I developed a passion for helping people as I grew oldere. I wanted to dedicate myself to a career that would help people feed their families and pay their bills, that’s why I chose recruitment.
I’m actively involved with the majority of the operations in the business, so no two days look alike. If I’m not home juggling calls and reading proposals, I’m traveling to meet with investors, partners and colleagues about new developments and partnerships. I have my hands deeply invested in our sales and product departments so my working hours are generally dedicated to one or the other.
Parents and guardians are generally the first people we love, learn from and aspire to be. They are our protectors and help us to develop a sense of confidence, security and self-worth. Without them around, those values are much harder to come by and can take years to build sufficiently as an adult. It’s one of the many things I know are impacted when parents don’t spend time with their children.
Spending time with your children should teach them to weave love and care into the fiber of their life. Remember that they’ll need to be functioning adults soon enough, who need to be able to care for themselves and hopefully, assist in their communities. Teaching your children to be self-sufficient and to love themselves builds a foundation of emotional and personal strength that will carry them through to adulthood. Having attentive parents creates a person who is secure in their own identity who can contribute positively to society at large.
One of my favorite things to do with my children, especially since stay-at-home orders were put in place, is playing board games. My children are pretty young so it’s been fun to introduce them to classics like Candyland, Life and Connect 4.
Another one of our favorite activities has been working on a common hobby with the whole family. There are lots of ways to make things like cooking and gardening interesting and engaging for children. It not only teaches them new skills but gives you quality time to spend together and challenges everyone involved.
Even simply watching a TV show all together, and being together that way, have really brought us closer together as family unit. It’s in these moments that children grow, learn and can feel the love parents have to give.
A good parent is one driven by love and their desire to make their children feel loved. Giving your children a strong foundation support builds their self-esteem and makes it possible for them to endure life’s ups-and-downs with aplomb. My children are still very young but I hope that the time and effort I’ve put into being there for them and supporting their dreams, has started building a strong -and much needed- foundation with positive sense of self.
More than anything I want to do things that make them happy in life. I try not to impress my own ideas about what I think they should do, and instead encourage them to pursue their varied interests. The world’s most revolutionary minds didn’t always have straight-forward paths to their greatest successes, but they remained curious and firm in their beliefs enough to see them through. I hope to do the same in my children so that they can pursue a life that truly fulfills them because it is their no choice — no matter what that is
I define success ultimately as a sense of happiness and contentment. Belief in yourself and the path that you’re on, that it’s the right one for you and it’s making you happy within yourself are all barometers I measure success by now.
I act on loving instinct when it comes to my parenting so I haven’t really investigated “parenting resources”. I feel parenting is a personal, subjective relationship influenced by a lot of one-of-a-kind factors, so it’s hard for me to see myself in a lot of the parenting advice in the ether based on that philosophy.
‘It’s not the roof you live under, it’s what’s under the roof that matters’. While I’ve been blessed with financial and material success thanks to my career, I embrace the reality that my children are my greatest pride and joy. That quote encourages everyone to be grateful for the things they do have and not worry so much about what on the outside or what outsiders think. It exemplifies my commitment ensuring that the foundation of who myself and my children are as my true legacy, as opposed to the material things that may be present on the outside.
Embrace the person that you are and stop comparing yourself to others. We’re only here for a brief moment in the grand scheme of it all, so embrace who you are and where you are try to enjoy and make the most of the moments and blessings life gives you.
Original Interview Found Here
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