Why am I so nervous about this holiday?

Hi guys, I'm going on holiday (yes again) at the end of the month, but this time it will be a family holiday! I will be going with my partner, my sister, my brother-in-law, my nephew and my partner. Four countries (Spain, France, Andorra and Portugal), four languages (Spanish, Catalan, French and Portuguese) in eleven days - on one hand, I am pleased to be showing my family why I totally love traveling so much and I believe I would make an excellent tour guide. But on the other hand, there's a part of me that is nervous because everyone has trusted me to make all the selections: it's a huge responsibility! I have chosen exactly the route we're taking through four countries, I've chosen every single place we're staying at, I've picked all the activities we're doing and look, my sister did offer to help but I thought, I live in Europe, I speak all four of the local languages in the countries we're going to - it makes perfect sense for me to do all the planning and I'd like to think that as a seasoned traveler, I've done a pretty good job. Still I'm nervous and allow me to explain why.

Firstly, I've picked the activities that I want to do - so for example, we're going to La Molina to ski for two reasons: firstly, I think it is a lot of fun and a great way to experience winter in Europe. Secondly, I want my nephew to at least be able to turn up in his new school (be it a JC or a poly) in the new year and say, "oh I've just been skiing in Spain with my uncle." Look, I grew up in a poor, working class family where we didn't have access to luxuries like that - I remember showing up at university feeling woefully inadequate and inferior to my richer classmates who did things like skiing during their winter holidays. I didn't want my nephew to come across as a working class 'suaku' who is unfamiliar with anything outside Singapore so I pushed for this skiing idea. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind or care whether he is any good at it, I just want him to be able to say that he went skiing to his friends and that should at least give him more credibility with his new friends as a sophisticated young person who does interesting activities. Now here's my fear: I have arranged for my sister, brother-in-law and my nephew to take private lessons with an instructor to help them master the basics and we're investing two days of an 11 day trip in the mountains. What if one or all three of them hate skiing and then they turn on me and blame me for forcing them to do something I enjoyed? What if they are unable to master the basics even after having paid a lot of money for those private lessons - then what? Would they berate me or be angry with me over this?

Is skiing easy? No, it isn't. I would be lying if I claimed it was - but to be realistic, most people would be able to master the basics in anything from half a day to a day, depending on how naturally gifted they are and if they are students with a good learning attitude. Believe you me, I've seen adults throw a tantrum and take off their skis in the middle of a lesson, cursing and swearing because they have found it just too difficult. Heck, I have seen very frustrated people quit halfway through everything from a driving lesson to a diving lesson. Now admittedly, I can do everything from research the best ski resorts in the Pyrenees to track down the best English speaking instructor for them but the one thing that I have zero control over is just how fast they will learn or how good they will become after a few hours of learning. Of course in an ideal world, they ought to be become reasonably good at skiing, nothing fancy but competent enough to get down the easy slopes slowly and safely then we can have a brilliant time together. I would then be able to share with my family something truly magical that I had discovered only after moving to Europe. Would I be disappointed if they turn out to be utterly terrible at skiing? Hell no, that would be unfair and let me be the first to point out that it took years of practice before I became a good skier, in fact I had been skiing for over 20 years already. Really, I'm just hoping that they would get through the two days of skiing without getting too frustrated at having to climb the steepest part of the learning curve whilst being able to appreciate other aspects of being out in the mountains, such as the fresh air and the frozen scenery.

Besides, I truly believe that there is great value in learning for the sake of learning - whether you're learning a musical instrument, a new language or doing a sports, the process of setting yourself a goal, working towards it and then hopefully, when you do achieve your goal, you are then filled with a great sense of pride and reward. Whilst I want my nephew to go through that process, I also want my sister to go through that process too because I think she has been very damaged and harmed by the Singaporean system. It took me a long time to convince her that she should try skiing - she had a very pessimistic attitude and started putting herself down the moment I suggested skiing. Good grief, I told her that she should wait till we get to there and for her to have her first fall before she starts putting herself down, rather than whilst we're talking about it now before the holiday had even first begun. She has an awfully negative and pessimistic attitude when it comes to new challenges like that and I don't think that's healthy - don't get me wrong, I don't blame her; rather I see her as a victim of the way we were brought up. I remember the way we were scolded and beaten for the most minor things, an example would be when I scored 99 marks for a mathematics exam in primary school. I think most Singaporean parents would have spontaneously enjoyed multiple orgasms if their kid produced that kind of results, but what did my parents do? They scolded me (and by that I mean they screamed abuse like savage banshees at the top of their voices for an eternity) for the one question that I got wrong, blaming me for the careless mistake. If that's the way children are raised, they are trained to ignore the 99% things they get right and feel awful about the 1% they got wrong.

The thing about my sister is that she isn't a rebel like me - she is a good girl, the perfect Asian daughter in every way, shape and form. She is the long suffering character who would take crap from my autistic parents and not argue with them, she would also suffer in silence when things go wrong at work and just grin and bear it. Perhaps that is a reflection of the way her culture demands that of her and she has chosen to embrace her culture (and hey, that's her choice and right to do so), but when I see her put herself down, telling me how awful she will be at skiing before she even gets on that plane to Europe, I shake my head in despair and think, "our parents and our culture has done you so much damage yet you're not even aware of the extent of damage they had inflicted on you over the years because you've been a good girl who never complains, even when things go wrong." So of course, in an ideal world, I want my sister to get on a pair of skis, discover that she can learn anything she puts her mind to and come away from that new challenge with a brand new sense of confidence in her abilities. But of course, learning anything new depends so much on being a good student and to be a good student, you need to believe in yourself, you need to have the right frame of mind to follow the teacher's instructions and if you allow self-doubt, pessimism and negativity to hold you back, then you're not going to learn much and you then become your own worst enemy. Here's an example from my gym about something I witnessed last night.

As you all know, I participate in my local gymnastics club's adult gymnastics programme. There's a lawyer at my gym called Oliver (not his real name) and he is about the same age as me, in his 40s. He started late but since he is very rich, he realized the best way to progress quickly was to get a private coach. So he asked around whom the best coach in the gym was and we all concluded that it was Calvin (not his real name) and so Oliver would have private lessons from Calvin. But good grief, last night I was training when I witnessed a conversation between Oliver and Calvin: Oliver was trying to do a handstand on the rings and Calvin was explaining to him exactly what he had to do in order to improve his balance on that handstand. Did Oliver listen? No, he got so defensive - he started giving excuses about why his handstands were not good: everything from how hard it was to do sports after a long day at work to the fact that he didn't do this as a child so it doesn't come naturally to him to the fact that he isn't flexible enough and then he brought up the fact that he didn't sleep well last night either. Goodness me - Calvin patiently dealt with it all, after all Oliver was a paying customer. I felt like going up to Oliver and saying to him, "you've paid Calvin good money for his advice and instruction, so perhaps you should stop being so defensive and giving all these excuses and start listening to Calvin instead. After all, he is your coach and he is not criticizing you out of malice, he is trying his very best to help you, if you actually listened to what he has just told you instead of getting defensive, you would have understood how to fix your handstand!"

But no, I chose not to get involved because it wasn't my battle - I knew exactly what Oliver was like and it wasn't up to me to fix his attitude. I do however see some similarities between Oliver and my sister (and to a certain degree, my nephew as well). It wasn't Oliver's physical ability that was holding him back from achieving that perfect handstand on the rings - rather, it was his attitude that was his biggest enemy. Now I feel like I have more of a 'right' as an uncle to try to nurture my nephew to have a good attitude towards embracing new experiences and having a positive attitude when it comes to facing new challenges, but I am really hoping that my sister would benefit from this just as much and whilst I convinced her to go along with this because it is going to be so beneficial for my nephew, I am also hopping that she would reap as much if not more of those same benefits and have a very positive learning experience. My sister and I got very little positive feedback and encouragement when we were children and whilst I  was fortunately to have escaped to the West where my friends tend to be a lot more optimistic and positive when it comes to encouraging each other, I'm not sure if my sister gets enough of that positive reinforcement within her culture. Most of all, she is an adult today so most people I imagine would just back off and let her do whatever she wants to do, rather than try to change her or mould her in any way. But goodness me, it hurts me when she chooses to put herself down like that and I wish I could help fix that.

Here's the problem with my sister's attitude - I think she is afraid of making mistakes because as a child and as a student, if she made a mistake, she would be reprimanded and punished by both her teachers and parents. The problem is that in our culture, adults didn't know how to handle the situation when a child makes a mistake, so they believe that by punishing the child for the mistake, then the child would be scared to make that mistake again. That doesn't work of course, especially if you have failed to explain to the child where s/he went wrong and how to avoid the mistake in the future. So in the case of my sister, she becomes afraid of making mistakes because she associates that with being punished and that resulted in her being afraid to try new things, like skiing. Nobody should be expected to be perfect all the time and certainly, I don't have any unrealistic expectations of my sister when it comes to learning how to ski. And like Calvin the nice gymnastics coach from my gym, certainly her instructor is not going to scold or punish her if she really sucked at skiing - hell no, she's a paying customer, the instructor is obliged to be nice, encouraging and polite regardless. It is called customer service, only people like her primary school teachers and my parents would yell at her and scold her if she makes a mistake. But somehow, they must have inflicted so much damage on her self-esteem in her childhood that they have scarred her for life, leaving her afraid to make mistakes when taking on new challenges. Again, I stress there's no judgement on my part - I just feel bad for my sister as I see her as a victim of really bad parenting and Asian culture.

An example about how she puts herself down: when my nephew was taking his PSLE, she told him that the PSLE is so much more difficult today and if she tried the same exam when she was 12, she would probably fail the mathematics exam. Allow me to put this in context: my sister aced her PSLE, O levels and A levels, she was the perfect Asian daughter who studied extremely hard to achieve straight As in order to go to university. So why would someone with an unblemished record like that look down on herself and claim that she would fail a PSLE maths exam then? She isn't stupid for crying out aloud, she is earning a lot of money in a very senior position in her company today - yet somehow, there is that part of her that doesn't even allow her the confidence to say something positive about herself even within the family. My opinion is that whilst the PSLE maths exam is indeed tricky, as long as she is well prepared for it, then of course she would ace it. If she tried to sit for a maths exam today without any revision, with zero preparation, then of course she would score badly bearing in mind that her last maths lesson in a classroom was back in 1988 - yeah, that was a crazy long time ago but nobody goes to an exam totally unprepared like that. So she is taking a totally unreasonable set of circumstances to falsely label herself as "stupid" when really, I know my sister, she is anything but stupid. She has suffered a lot from extremely poor parenting and thus there are certain aspects of her character which I hope I could try to heal in a small way as a sibling and after all,  I can totally understand where this mindset came from.

I know what some of you may say: okay Alex, I get where you're coming from but why make the stakes so high? Couldn't you have chosen a less challenging activity that doesn't involve having to learn a brand new sport in a very short space of time? Well I don't believe you can learn anything or achieve much if you're not challenged enough. Some years ago, a gym opened up near where we lived so I was given a voucher for a trial lesson and noticed they did yoga lessons so I thought, why not? Let's try something different. Well, the yoga teacher was so focused on us relaxing and breathing properly that at one stage, she even said "well done" to us for taking deep breaths. I kid you not, I laughed out aloud at that point and she got upset. "Is something very funny?" She challenged me. I told her that I breathe all the time and if I ever stopped breathing, I would be dead. Heck, I even breathe when I sleep, it's just something my body does. Babies start breathing the moment they are born, they don't have to learn; so to praise me for breathing is nothing short of condescending. She then said, "No, you don't understand what we're trying to do here." I said I think I do - there are so many paying customers who want to feel good about having done some kind of sports class but they are too lazy to be challenged to do something more difficult like judo or gymnastics so they come to a yoga class and be praised for simply knowing how to inhale and exhale. You can't praise someone for the sake of praising someone - they need to earn that praise and I don't think I deserve to be praised for just breathing. The yoga teacher looked at me sternly and said, "mate, I think you're in the wrong class." And I replied, "You're right, I'm leaving. And as for the rest of you, don't stop breathing!"

Okay, you may call me a cynical git for what I did during that yoga lesson but you should have seen some of the fat middle aged people in that yoga lesson who were probably not capable of anything athletic and were just glad to be praised for breathing during a yoga class. Can you learn anything when you're not even challenged, not even taken out of your comfort zone, for doing something you already know how to do (like breathing)? Of course not. You simply cannot replicate that sense of achievement, pride and sheer glee when you achieve something amazing even if you have an attractive yoga teacher in tight lyrca who is willing to praise you for simply breathing. And that's why I picked skiing and fingers crossed - they've agreed to do it so I hope it doesn't blow up in my face. What do you think? Am I too nervous about things that are clearly out of my control? What should I do if my sister or nephew struggle with skiing? Am I perhaps unrealistic in my expectations in what they may reap out of this holiday? Would they still be able to enjoy themselves in the mountains even if they're not good at skiing? Let me know what you think, many thanks for reading.