Letters to My Kids

Life seems pretty complicated as a young adult. You’re experiencing a wide variety of pressures that seem to be unique to your age group. Pressure to perform at school with seemingly endless homework and testing. Perhaps you feel pressure to perform from a sports team or academic club. You may have job responsibilities that are new to you. Peer pressure to look, act and think a certain way is tremendous. Maybe you’re looking to the future and wondering what you’re going to do with your life, or who you’re going to spend it with.

By contrast, the life of adults – particularly your parents – looks pretty easy. We already have a family. We have a career we’re chasing every day. We don’t seem to have the same problems with money that you do. Our friends seem to accept us as we are. We have a certain reputation that’s already built. We don’t have to impress others around us. But most of all, we have a grip on our direction in life. There’s no soul-searching about where we go next or how we’re going to get there. We seem to have it all together.

You’ll probably be amazed to know that adults have the same problems you do – and a lot more of them. While we’re not being tested academically or responsible for homework, we find the same needs to prove ourselves in the workplace. And we not only have to prove ourselves theoretically, but practically. It’s not enough to know the Four Principles of Marketing – we have to put them into practice on a regular basis. We may not be trying to prove to a coach that we can perform athletically, but our egos are working hard to prove it to our friends! I’ll admit that we do have the advantages of leaning on “I used to be able to…”, but at the same time we’re facing our own mortality and desperately trying to deny that we’re over the hump of life and on our way downhill. The same battles with material status are there to tempt us – but now it’s with bigger stakes and greater responsibilities. As a teen you can make the mistake of spending too much on yourself and only have to deny yourself a couple weeks of comforts – we can quite easily make life problematic for the whole family permanently. We may have “found the right person”, but we’re now working instead to keep that relationship positive. And we worry about the future, too. Not only our own, but our children’s. We’re not always sure about where we want to go next, either.

I’m sure it still seems easier on us from your vantage point. And the truth is, it is easier. Not because the pressures have been reduced, but because we’ve learned to deal with them. We’ve learned how to be decisive and how to deal with the bad choices we’ve made. We’ve learned what’s really valuable to us and how to prioritize our lives to focus on those things. We’ve learned to accept ourselves as less than perfect, but still pretty darn good. And when there’s uncertainty in life, we’ve learned to accept it and rely on our previous successes as evidence that we’ll probably pull the current problems out as well.

There wasn’t some magical age or point of transition when we suddenly became this way. It was a long process of learning that we’re still experiencing. We didn’t hit a magic point in which we became this capable. We grew little by little, success by success – and we’re still growing today.

The fact is, the “magic age” when you get things together is the time you choose to. When you understand your own potential, your goals in life, your skills and capabilities, you learn to deal with the pressures. You understand that you’ve beaten difficulties like these before, and likely will beat these. You learn that a little bit of the unknown is OK when you have the bigger picture of where you’re going. And the sooner you understand that you are the one responsible for what happens to you and where you go in life, the sooner you get a grip on the fact that you’re capable of living up to the challenges that accompany this journey. You accept that you’re the master of your own destiny and learn to move accordingly.

When’s the magic age? Whenever you choose.

No matter how hard we try, things just don’t always go our way. Sometimes we find we’re just not capable of achieving what we intended. Sometimes the rug gets pulled from under you. Sometimes when you’ve anticipated every contingency, a new one invents itself that’s completely out of your control.

It’s not a great situation. Disappointment, depression and anger are common reactions to falling short of the mark. You want to strike out at someone, find a reason for the sabotage and avenge it. Maybe you want to beat yourself up a little bit, too. Society is not kind to failure of any sort and unfortunately, ego often causes us to reject the support of those who care about us out of pride in our indomitable spirit.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have a lot of successes in life. And I’ve been human enough to see a lot of failures as well. I’d like to give you a bit of advice regarding those moments when you’ve missed your goals.

Failure is to be expected. No one comes out of the birth canal perfect. We are all in a state of evolution, of continuous improvement. With that comes the ups and downs, the highs and lows. If you’ve never failed, you’ve never really stretched yourself and consequently, you’ve never really grown. Sometimes when you’ve experienced a long chain of successes, you see failure as a step backwards, or maybe even the slippery slope to greater failings. Failing is not an indicator of insufficiency. It’s a natural consequence of growing to be something greater than you currently are. So expect the failures. Worry if you don’t have one every now and then, because it means you’re stagnating in a comfort zone. Indeed, rejoice in them just a little bit – it means you’re alive and growing and becoming something greater than you were yesterday.

Failure is success if we learn from it. Failure is the greatest educational opportunity you can hope for. The lesson is relevant, emotionally charged and deep seated. The great minds – the inventors, the entrepreneurs, the societal drivers all report a long list of failures that made them what they are today. Make sure when you fail that it becomes a lesson to you. Analyze it. Understand what went wrong and why it went wrong. What can you change about yourself, your life, your outlook to ensure that it doesn’t happen again? Failing to achieve a goal just means that you now thoroughly understand one way NOT to achieve your goal.

Remember your successes. One of the greatest anti-depressants in times of failure is to review your successes. Drag the scrapbooks out of the closet. Review the annual performance appraisals. Take a peek through the college yearbook. Remind yourself that this is only a single incident and deal with it emotionally in terms of all the things that have gone right for you.

Accept support. Ego is a wonderful motivator, but it’s a two edged sword. Don’t let egotistic delusions prevent you from accepting the help offered by those who care about you. Pretending you’re not affected by the problem or assuring everyone that you don’t need any help is just cutting off your nose to spite your face. Call in some of the emotional capital you’ve been building with those around you. Give people the satisfaction of sharing their support and allow it to motivate them to help you.

Everyone fails. Not just once or twice, but constantly throughout life. It’s a part of becoming better than you are now. In a manner of speaking, life is about learning. Let your failures teach you and build you to what you can be.

“90% of success is showing up”

That truism by Woody Allen is not without merit. Although you’re not going to hit the heights of success by putting in a marginal effort, it definitely is a prerequisite. You’re not going to get anywhere without trying. You’ll never have great grades in class if you don’t show up. You won’t succeed in a business by sitting at home dreaming about it. You won’t excel at a job (or likely keep one) without getting out of bed and punching the clock.

The real secret to this mantra is that showing up is usually the most difficult step. If you can get up and go to work, you’ll usually go ahead and get some work done. If you actually put on your gear and show up at the gym, you’ll go ahead and get a workout in. If you cut ties with your old company and start your own business, you’ll work at making it a success. Once you’ve made the leap and committed to doing something, you’ll usually get about the business of getting it done.

So if you can find ways to make sure you show up, you’ll be on the path to achieving your goals. And if you can manage to see to it that you do show up – even when you’re not motivated – you’ll see a steady progression toward what you want to achieve. Some suggestions:

• Tie yourself to a goal financially. Pay for a gym membership, and you’ll be motivated to take advantage of that relationship and go work out. After all, you don’t want to think about the money you’re wasting by paying for a gym you never use, right?
• Tie yourself to a goal socially. Get a buddy to co-commit to a common goal and hold each other responsible. Getting up every morning to run can get really difficult when it’s rainy and cold outside, or when you anticipate a big day, or when you’re feeling a bit under the weather. However, if you’ve got a buddy you’re supposed to meet, a little more responsibility comes into play.
• Tie yourself to a goal occupationally. If it’s your intent to learn a new skill, find a way to become responsible for learning that skill within your employment. Volunteer to learn the new programming language, or to give a review of the new business book everyone is reading at a meeting. Volunteer to speak, or organize or analyze – whatever requires that you gain some of the new skill in order to accomplish it.
• Tie yourself to a goal by seeking a mentor. Find a person that’s accomplished in whatever course you wish to pursue and make a connection with them with an opportunity to follow up with them later to have them review your progress. Hire a teacher or tutor. Just find some way to make yourself accountable for reaching your goal to another person.
• Tie yourself to a goal with ego. Brag a bit. Make it well known among your circle that you WILL accomplish your goal within a certain time frame. Make sure your talk is strong so that you will be embarrassed to report failure. Peer pressure can work both ways.

Again, showing up is rarely going to get you what you want. But it definitely is the first step, and one you can control without a lot of effort.