How many of you have ever find it difficult to talk or convince your dad for anything you desire to do in your life? I suppose almost everyone has had this experience once in a lifetime. So how to deal with this? Should we just barge into him and speak our heart out which might or might not end well, or we should prepare ourselves on how to put our thoughts in words to make him think how ready we are.

Someone is afraid of talking to their dad because he is very strict. Some might just don't want their dad to shatter down their happiness. Some might think their dad would be ashamed of them if they tell them what they really like and want to be in life, while some of us are introverts that we have that fear of speaking our heart out to him. No matter what the reason would be, there is always this one common thing called FEAR. Our fear of hurting our parents, our fear of failure, our fear of what would they think of us, our fear of the monetary expense they did on us for a path which we do not want to take anymore. Fear fills our minds with so many thoughts that we limit ourselves. Don't freak out but even I have gone through this fear and that is why I am today able to express this feeling.

I didn't get coaching of football because I could not tell my dad how much I loved the game. I could not get into the field of I.T. because of self-doubt and fear of failure. I had to let go of my love because I had a fear that my dad would become sad if I shift to another country. I could not tell my dad that I m not a person with a business mind because of the fear that his dream would fail to see me as a businessman. I even could not ask him to buy my favorite bike for me and settled down with what he thought would be good for me. I simply could not. Till the age of 30 and 3 years of marriage life, I COULD NOT.

The trauma, regret, and turmoil got bigger and bigger as days passed. It came to the time where I would sit ideally the entire day in my office having zero concentration on my work. My health and my relationships got affected. I started blaming people for everything. It seemed I was moving towards depression. I had people around me but I assumed that nobody would understand me... I ASSUMED.

Finally, after 1 year of preparing myself to quit all this on my 31st birthday, I told my dad that we need to talk. I thought I had gathered enough courage to talk to him and well prepared to make him understand. I had all my pointers in my head. We sat facing each other and for the next 2 minutes, I COULD NOT utter a single word. Same fears running across my mind again and again. The entire 1-year preparation was of no help at all. My dad kept asking me why I have made him sit in front of it and I was dead silent. 

After 5 minutes of my silence, I could only say " I AM TIRED DAD" and slowly tears started rolling out.

There is no perfect way to tell your dad or mom or anybody else. The only way is your way. An extrovert would make an excel sheet in his mind and execute it very well in front of anybody whereas an introvert would just say a line and the expressions would say it all. The only way to say it is your way. Yes, there is immense pressure inside you, the fear of failure haunts 24x7, the thought that sacrifices made by your dad might go in vain makes you uncomfortable. But understand this, by taking a path you really do not wish to is also converting that sacrifice in a slow pain which you both are going regret.  

There is no guarantee that your dad will understand your dreams or your desires. The reason is there a generation of survival and we are a generation of exploration. Even dad has fears for us. Dad always wants a sure-shot success path for us, they don't want us to fail, they are protective and their intention is to always give us a barrier-free path. Break the barrier to understand "the dad".

So respect them, love them, and have a chat with them because, in the end, dads do understand.