Rebellious Thoughts #62 - 🤘 Having 'The Chat' with My Youngest One

Hey Rebels!

As always, I promise to provoke you in less than 5 min once a week so that you can stay adaptable and on top of your game.

YEW!

Let’s get into today’s newsletter:

I’ll share a little personal story this week, something I have discussed with my older two kids and now was the little one’s time to hear it.

Now that I have your attention... sorry about the title, but it wasn’t the “sex talk”!

My youngest plays basketball and this year made it into “the ones” in rep basketball. He trains well and is very focused and has done very well in all the practice matches so far.

When the first grading game of the season happened, he wasn’t in the “starting five”.
In basketball it’s like a big deal to be in the 5 that start the match cos it’s roughly the 5 the coach thinks are the best - in kids basketball, this is more perception than reality but doesn’t matter, in his mind, he should have been in the top 5 and he wasn’t.

The game was great, the team won, but he was super frustrated. He didn’t play enough minutes and felt the coach didn’t recognise his training ethics, effort and skill. His internal dialogue swung from: “I’m going to work even harder and show him” to: “I can’t believe he doesn’t see I’m one of the best in the team”.

Effectively from: I’m going to work really hard on my capability and increase it, to: “I think a lot of myself and have huge ambition and you are making a mistake not seeing it”

Kids are fairly loose about ambition when they are young - there’s no expectation or comparative or impossible in their minds so they can go from I want to play in the NBA to be the prime minister to cement truck driver. And in their minds, there’s no baggage or connotation or scale as to what is more or less ambitious.

It’s quite beautiful to think that whatever you want to do or be has in your mind no judgment and all of it seems perfectly possible - even simultaneously - “I’ll be both a diplomat and a tennis coach!”

Capabilities are also very fluid, a kid wants to play something or do something and they learn what they have to learn as they do it. I’ve never seen any of my kids struggle to learn any of the video games they decided to play or use any of the tech they wanted to use.

Generally speaking, the first experience they have with judgement on ambition or capabilities is with sport or dance like the example above. They would like to be in the “A team” - they have the ambition - but they get selected in the “C team” because they are just not as good as others. They don’t have the capability.
They think: “You wanted to be in the A team but you are not good enough so you are in the C team”

Before I explain the model, bear in mind that when I say “kids”, the truth is that this is something that applies to all of us, a lesson to keep front of mind.

It’s not a lesson for kids only, it’s a good lesson for any human at any age.
A lesson for your career!

In my case, I didn’t learn it till later in life and I wish I learnt it earlier.

When you become too ambitious but are not capable enough to back the ambition, you enter loser territory… it’s dangerous and you can be judged hard.

When you have too much capability but no ambition at all, you enter waste territory, you could be doing so much more!

The ideal is a perfect balance between ambition and capability (see image below). 
Be ambitious but follow up with credible skills - or build great skills and push yourself to use them!

I tend to encourage my kids to err more on the side of ambition and risk being put down by people (tall poppy syndrome) than to err on the side of capability and get really comfortable.

Like I always say to my kids, be unrealistic…as much as you want!

Of course, there is a point (see chart below) that you go too far, but that ability to back yourself and believe you can is critical.

I find a lot of people on the “waste” side, erring more on capability, thinking they don’t have enough skills to do something so they wait and wait till they get more skills but it’s never enough.

Huge potential, huge skill, huge transferable capability, but not ambitious enough or too afraid to back themselves.

Another observation is that in business, Australians find American people in that loser category cos Americans talk themselves up a lot and advertise their ambition with a giant megaphone, something Australians find embarrassing - the whole tall poppy syndrome rubbish.

Often young founders when they pitch their startup can come across as super cocky and over the top - “I’ve got this”. And as an investor, you need to know that of course, they are “faking it”. The question is: do you trust they will catch up and “make it”?

Anyway, have a little look at the model, talk to your kids, maybe with your partner, where do you think you are?! How balanced are you? Are you erring on the side of ambition? Sticking your neck out and pushing hard for your dreams?

YEW!!

Love

Gus

P.S. Hey it’s Black Friday and you are probably being bombarded with ads to buy things you can’t let go - things to fill your wardrobes and garages and take up the space you should be giving to novelty.

Here, buy an experience instead, end the year thinking deeply about your life and where you want to go! #buyexperiencesnotthings

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