How a side effect of “strict discipline” gave me lifelong self belief
It was around 1970, the end of the school term and I was apprehensively awaiting my father’s reaction to my school report. Having come 29th in a class of 30 pupils I was pretty sure he would not be happy. I was not disappointed!
Up until that report I had always been in the top 5 of the class which was an expectation that my father had drummed into me from my earliest years. Unfortunately in a primary school of 40 children where my “class” comprised of only 6 or 7 kids, being in the top 5 said very little.
My father was a fairly typical parent of his era and firmly believed in the saying “spare the rod and spoil the child”. So having moved to secondary school only to find myself at the bottom of the class my dad did not spare the rod. In an episode of beating that today may have well got him arrested he demonstrated just how unhappy he was with my performance. Luckily the beating in itself is not the thing that had the greatest impact.
Jump forward one term and I’m again awaiting my father’s response to my end of term report. This time, having come 2nd in the same class of 30, I was hoping for a more upbeat reaction. Oddly he seemed almost as enraged by my coming second as he had by coming 29th! He decided that if I could go from nearly last to nearly first then:
- being 29th last term was even worse than he’d thought! And
- after I’d said in my defence that I was only 2nd by 0.1%, that I should have come first.
In any event, his anger triggered a set of thoughts and a conclusion that has been my constant companion ever since.
The thoughts go as follows:
- The first beating had created a strong fear motivation that I had somehow harnessed to study a bit harder.
- The addition study had resulted in a dramatic change in my performance, moving from 29th to 2nd.
- However, all my teachers and society in general were telling me that some mythical “Ability” is the key factor in what people can achieve?
Having reflecting on this I concluded that in any meaningful sense ability is a myth. To this day I remain convinced that in pretty much all spheres of human endeavour this is true.
Whilst having ability might make a difference if you are selecting Apollo astronauts or Nobel prize physicists or Olympic sprinters; in normal life the difference between whether you become the cleaner or the CEO is largely down to how much time you are exposed to the information needed to become CEO. That for each individual this time may vary slightly, the outcome is more about whether you are CEO at 35 or 40 (not as today a choice of being CEO or not).
I see the pride that parents have when their children walk or talk earlier than their peers, but have never seen the slower ones guided to give up walking or talking because they lack the ability.
I continue to live my life on the basis that in any meaningful sense (I have no desire to be an astronaut) pretty much everything is available to me if I’m prepared to learn the appropriate skills build the required strengths and ingrain the appropriate habits.
So jump in and be what you want. It took the world 3.6 billion years of trial and error to make you! It’s unlikely the world got it wrong; far more likely is that you’re perfect for it
🙂