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outdated and irrelevant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