Meet Alina Adams

Alina, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

My parents and I immigrated from the Soviet Union to the US in 1977. What my parents did right was demonstrate two things: How to work hard, and how to work hard doing something you love. For our first few years in America, my father worked three jobs: A day job, a night job, and a weekend job. He never complained about needing to work hard. It was necessary, so he did it. Eventually, he narrowed it down to just one job, but it was always clear that he enjoyed it, even when there were setbacks and frustrations. My mother, who had been a chemistry teacher in the USSR, retrained to be a computer programmer in the US. I remember her talking about how much she loved the challenges and the puzzles that came with it. I was never raised to believe that work was something you were supposed to hate. Work was something you were expected to love. And if you didn’t love it, you should find a way to improve your circumstances. That’s what my parents did by leaving the Soviet Union, and they brought the same mindset to every challenge. To this day, I think, “If I don’t like what is happening in my life, it is up to me to change it.” I have been told by native-born Americans that this kind of mindset is stressful and puts the onus on the victim. I prefer to see it as empowering and hopeful. And that’s what my parents did right, too.

Read the entire interview at: https://canvasrebel.com/meet-alina-adams/