My son (and youngest) Callum is towards the end of his GCSEs. As I write this blog on Monday the 10th, he only has three exams left, one on Tuesday and two on Friday, done and dusted, never to see GCSEs again.
Funnily enough, this little process of GCSEs has brought us closer together because Callum has needed to be coached a bit through this. My wife, Alison, and I decided from a long way out that all we could do here was decrease any stress, try to get him to sleep, and try to get him to eat as well as possible.
You can't force knowledge into someone's head. However, you might want to do that.
If I'm honest, I don't think Callum has worked as hard as he could have; if I'm completely honest, I know he hasn't worked as hard as he could have.
Callum could have worked harder and sat in front of his books for longer hours.
I could have shouted at him (more).
I could have punished and removed things, but he's 16 and needs to figure it out for himself.
The other day, though, we were chatting through this period (I've been around the house as much as I could over the last little while, and I've taken them to school a lot of the time, chatted to him after exams, and just tried to make things as simple and smooth as possible) in one of these wonderful phases, which I'll look back on with real fondness. He just said to me, "The problem with my generation is that we want everything now."
I've tried to explain to my children both verbally and through modelling of behaviour that the problem with the long term is that it takes a long time.
And so, you may see some outliers who managed to get something good now, but most of the time, the people that you see who have the thing that you would like to have (the talent or the friends or the muscles or the money or the happiness) have worked at it perfected the art for a very long time.
We all know the story about how Mozart was a child genius, except he'd been writing music for almost 15 years.
We all know the story about Andre Agassi, the Williams sisters or Tiger Woods and how their parents had pushed them through the pain barrier at the earliest possible age.
That metaphor is flawed because, really, most of us don't want to damage people to make them better at something but in essence, it is the tiny little things that you do day by day tick, tick, tick that builds you up to be a better thing.
The discussion with Callum really centred around going to the gym. Like many boys, he's turned into a 16-year-old gym addict.
So, he goes to the gym four to five times a week, very self-directed, for 90 minutes to two hours each time, and he is changing shape dramatically, but he is not becoming 'pumped' because one of the non-negotiables for me was that he's not taking supplements at 16 to make it go faster.
I tried to do that under the table a little bit, but I managed to shut it down, and this is how the conversation went.
He now knows that if he takes powder (protein) or other crazy supplements, he's liable to get bigger quicker, but he also knows that he wants to have a physique which is long-lasting and built on strong foundations.
And so where he will be in five years time by just doing this the hard way, the natural way, without adding in all the shit, will be a much better, much more sustainable thing for the future.
Isn't that an extraordinary metaphor for many of us (particularly me) for where we could be a year from now, three years from now, or five years from now?
Blog Post Number - 3836
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