The dinosaur talk to my son

have you ever tried to

advise your sons to daughters about

professional life

personal development or education and in

doing so

feeling that they were hopelessly

outdated and irrelevant

as a father of a 17 year old son i felt

i had to give him some advices about

his choice of study but when i got into

this

and thought about it i i sort you know

it just slowed down on me

it was so many things that has changed

since i was a teenager so how could i

possibly offer him anything of relevance

so it was a great relief to me when we

got this invitation

from the school for a free session with

the career advisor at the school

i mean just the idea of getting some

professional help

uh was really uplifting and welcome so

of course we accepted and we went down

to the school

and we stood there in the hallway in

front of his door waiting for overturn

and i must admit that uh this feeling of

relief

really got a severe hit back when i saw

that huge flow diagram at this door

panel

it was a you know body size flow diagram

where you could see different arrows

with universities

topics all leading to a long range of

different jobs you could choose

and most likely there is somebody out

there who is very proud of this piece of

work

but for me it just suffocated my

confidence

totally but we knocked on the door and

we entered

the office of the advisor sat down and

we were ready to be enlightened

two minutes into that conversation it

became very clear to me that we were

really

not the fi a fine-tuned team untangling

all the different options and making it

clear for him what choices he should

choose we would rather a group of two

elderly men

talking about the future which we to a

large extent would not be a part of

and then this guy a modern youth you

know

my son he has an excess of information

and with that excessive information

he also get an excess of choices and it

in his world

uh there will be changes uh happening so

rapid and that’s a certain scale that

these history books we we write they

will appear like

slow dull and foreseeable novels and in

his world the jobs he will

desire they are not even invented yet so

he he just might have a career target to

be

a light speed explorer instead of a

blacksmith if you understand what i mean

and his career advisor he had the heart

at his right place but his mind in the

wrong century

because he tried to make clarity to a

world that kept on

changing as we spoke and the way he did

this he just added new and new routes

and new options and new combination all

the way and how this map dot in my son’s

brain i don’t know

but in my brain it looked like this

so the flow diagram at the door know has

transformed into a

gigantic network of different routes all

leading from a to b

a lot of options so in my head a

nightmare in terms of clarity

but the worst thing about it is that it

became less and less clear for me

whether that root he was talking about

actually

was a safeguarding my son’s

relevance and success

so and i felt this on myself as well

during this conversation because in the

start i had

i offered a lot of comments and

questions you know and

felt i had to of course being a

responsible parent

but then i could hear myself slowing

down until i came to complete silence

and i come to the point i came to the

point where i felt like this guy

i felt i was a dinosaur you know a kind

of a dinosaur that’s just

i’ve been walking around for ages in my

prehistoric forest

and it it seemed to be a very long shot

that any of my experience and now

could be relevant for his modern world

so after the session we went back to the

car and we headed back home again and it

was this

sound of silence inside the car very

awkward

uh so i tried to raise the level of

energy a little bit and asked my son you

know what did you get out to this

session and he responded that you know

besides

nothing is it you know didn’t give me

anything

and this is frustrating because all my

friends they are wondering about the

same and they keep on asking what to do

and all they get

is these advices so do’s and don’ts in

terms of professions

and most of these professions you talk

about they won’t be there in 10 years he

said

so i didn’t i couldn’t really get you

know coming up with an

answer or anything to continue on his

response there so we went back to back

home in the complete silence in the car

so back home i really do to my study and

i thought you know i have two options

now i can just forget it and hope for

the best or i could dig deeper

and being a responsible parent of course

i choose dig deeper so i hit

the rewind button on my live recorder

and i traveled back in time

and then thinking about the fundamentals

that have changed people i met

to my education through my career or

personal life

and i found that there were actually two

categories of people

the prosperous and stagnated

and the prosperous and thriving

and not measured or categorized whether

they have

reached a certain level of monetary

statement or

an organization hierarchy no no no those

that they’re trying those where the

people that

seem to be continue to develop

themselves all the through

all all through the whole life really

those that seem to spread energy around

them rather than drain it from others

those that always was offered a new

option around the corner

when things looked fairly dark so those

would be people you would love to have

as colleagues and friends i guess

and then it was this other group the

prosperous and stagnated in there you

could fight people that

maybe even made it to the top executive

level but for some reason they lost that

in the drive

and with that they lost fewer got fewer

and fewer choices

until they just diminished in relevance

and slowed down

and their energy just went out the

window

so i took a red pen and a piece of paper

and a green pen

and with the red pen i took down all the

commonalities i could think of

for the prosperous and the stagnated and

the red and the green pen

i used for those that were thriving

adding more and more of these notes

and i found out that it was not about

schools or universities or smart careers

that did no no there was something more

fundamental

and if you think about it it makes sense

because

in earlier generation i think it was

more likely than not

that what the prior ex generation had

experienced will be relevant for the

next

hence if you were advising your son or

daughter about

a choice the likelihood of that advice

to be sound and safe was fairly high

and i think it was easy to be specific

as well i mean if you

were a blacksmith and you advised your

son to be a blacksmith

you couldn’t do too much harm most

likely

but today the world is continuously

disrupting

so your advice to make that stay

relevant it needs to be much more on the

fundamental level

so you need to address what really

ensures that your son

or daughter remains happy and relevant

so i really got energy for this and i

looked through all my notes and

i ended up with three advices i would

like to offer my son

i and through this process i got out of

my dinosaur skin

and i felt energized and really a

relevant father from this century

so i called my son being motivated by

the momentum i got

and he came up to my study slipped into

the sofa

and he had this body posture i’m sure

most of you

know and reckon where he tells you that

you know i’m already on my way back to

whatever i was doing prior to

you calling me but please offer what you

have to say father

but as i started to offer my sincere and

heartfelt

advices his body language changed we

made eye contact

and we swiftly got a good conversation

going

and my first advice was choose

stimulating people and environment

and by that i mean you should always

seek and invest in friends and

colleagues that pushes you further but

at the same time they

you should also look for those that

create an environment around you

where it’s safe to fail and succeed are

you not that yeah

i reckon this because in our taekwondo

classes we always push each other

to improve our skills but at the same

time we have this

unwritten law not to laugh over each

other when we fail

i felt this was a really good start and

i was energized now to go further with

my second advice

my second advice was choose always the

path that fuels your motivation

and i said um even though you seem to be

following that path that

is perfect for you from time to time it

will require that you

take that extra mile and walk that extra

mile

then it’s imminent that whatever you are

following actually fueling your inner

motivation or aligns with your beliefs

okay he said can you offer me an example

of that

and i said yeah if you i want you to

make sure that you follow a path so that

when you walk

wake up every morning you have a little

smile on your face

not the contour area that you wake up

every morning

just realizing that the batteries have

been lowered further

and that makes sense daddy said i mean

it feels daunting to think about that my

rest of my life would just be a task

that only consumes my energy

do you have more advices he asked yes i

have a third one

and that’s my last one choose

a path that always add new skills

because you you will experience a world

where there are a lot of changes and the

best asset and job protection for you

then

would be the skill to acquire new

know-how and the way you do that

is that you make sure that when you are

presented for a new potential path you

always choose the path

that forces you to develop new skills it

might be uncomfortable from time to time

but do so it was this sudden silence you

could see that this brain was processing

what was just told

but it’s true that i i i believe you

because there are so many things

invented every day so so of course you

need to keep on learning to stay

relevant but for me he said it’s a

little bit of a surprise that you grown

ups

stop to learn new things that will never

happen to me i will keep on

learning new things until i’m 100 years

old

he raced with a nod of appreciation

which is a strong recognition from a kid

that just grew taller than you seemingly

overnight so i was delighted

you may feel free to use my three

advices uh

the stimulating people and environments

the path that fuels and motivation

and the path of that new skills but i

want you not to fear to offer your own

advices you just need to dig deep enough

to find out uh

that your experience and now actually is

universal in terms of time and space

so you are for sure not irrelevant and

an outdated

dinosaur thank you

you