Resist The Temptation To Tell Your Kids This

The thing about working hard is that sometimes, it gives you the results you expect. Sometimes, it does not.

Two people of the same age, same background, same IQ could follow the playbook word-for-word and yet experience two completely different outcomes.

Either way, this teaches us a couple of important lessons.

For one, life isn’t fair. It’s a hard knock. In fact, it might be a little more unfair than not, which is why conventional wisdom suggests that we should work harder to reduce the risk of this unfairness happening to us.

I would love to think that I am, in a general sense, a physically disciplined person. For three times a week, I would wake up at five-thirty to hit the gym at six, which also means I have to be in bed by ten. Since last September, I’ve committed to rugby practice twice a week in the evenings. In my spare time, I would watch rugby videos on YouTube, hoping to internalize the necessary skills and playing strategies into my neural system.

I was trying to make the cut for the national men’s rugby team.

The one thing about sports—or any endeavor in life, really—is that you don’t just show up and expect to make it. You don’t just appear on competition day and magically hope to perform or outpace your competitors. The success you’re looking for is found in the days leading up to the actual event itself... and guess what? It’s far from fair: Stay away from your favorite food, wake up early to put in reps at the gym—they all mean something until an unexpected injury ends your career in an instant! Unintentionally offend an important person on the management panel? Good luck with selection.

You're not just competing against yourself. Every other chap in contention for selection is putting as much—if not, more—work as you.

But whatever it is, as Bill Walsh famously said, let the score take care of itself—do the simple things well and naturally it will come.

I got selected. Two weeks ago, we went head-on against Thailand and Chinese Taipei in the Union’s Cup. I’m happy to report that we won the championship on home soil.

Surely it would have been a nice thought that, after all, for all the efforts I’ve put in, this is the least I’d deserve.

But it’s not true! And it’s so tempting to tell yourself that, especially when something goes according to your meticulously crafted plan!

In fact, if I were to even slightly suggest that putting in the hard work was going to secure me a spot on the team and the eventual success of the competition, I would have been walloped by the guys who did not make the cut!

The truth is much simpler: I loved the sport. I genuinely did. It demanded me to be tough, mentally and physically. Your shoulder hurts? Keep going. You’re bleeding? Keep going. An expectation has been placed on us to rise to the occasion. I may not be the biggest, fittest, or strongest player on the team, but I’m obligated to work doubly-hard to cover the gaps. In fact, it was the only thing I must do. After all, it was a team sport. It’s not about me anymore. From afar, it looks like a hooligan’s game of thirty grown men chasing an oval ball while trying to smash each other into the ground. In reality, it’s a hooligan’s game played by gentlemen: Once the final whistle blows, everyone’s shaking hands, hugging, and laughing. A day or two after, regardless of the win or loss, it’s back to the training ground. Rinse and repeat.

I thought I was committed to becoming a better player, but I realized I was committed to becoming a better person.

That’s what I loved about sports—it teaches you more about life than life itself. So for eighteen years, I kept going.

The lesson I take from my recent success on the pitch is not that I’m talented. It’s that pursuing what excites you most might be the most effective strategy in life. Really! It’s that sacrificing your time to put in the reps at six in the morning or making the decision to do extras can pay off big-time. It’s that success, in whatever way you define it, usually takes longer than you expect, but after it happens, all that time disappears. It's about being grateful for the fact that the universe has granted you the opportunity to do what you love. It’s that by trusting (and loving) the process you set for yourself, instead of focusing on accolades or what you think you deserve, you put yourself in a position for success both now and in the future.

Again, if I had known any of this was going to happen, I might have behaved differently. Maybe my arrogance might have seemed warranted, or perhaps I would have demanded more from the coaches. Even if I was not selected, I'll still continue investing in the sport. But of course, I wasn’t thinking about this at the time. I was just happy to be playing at all!

Hard work hardly guarantees anything these days, and as parents, we share a collective responsibility to shield our kids from this mindset.

Now, I’m not suggesting that the idea of working hard is a zero-sum game. If anything, we must show (not tell) our kids that working hard is a responsibility to uphold if we ever want to make the slightest dent in the world.

But beneath the “working hard” is something that we often overlook.

There’s this story about the theater director Tommy Kail. When he first saw the script Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote in 2000, he knew it was going to be special. So for eight years, they dedicated themselves to bringing “In The Heights” to life. It opened on Broadway in 2008. That same year, it won a Grammy and four Tony Awards. At Radio City Music Hall, the entire cast and crew went up to receive the final Tony Award for Best Musical. Two of them hoisted Lin-Manuel Miranda onto their shoulders. There was fist-pumping, waving, and screaming. Everyone was happy.

Forty-four seconds later, the lights changed. The audience rose to their feet and began to leave. But Kail remained on stage, alone.

What Kail realised on stage that evening is what I felt after winning the competition: The final outcome is a fleeting moment compared to the whole experience.

The cast and crew of "In The Heights" stood on the Radio City Music Hall stage for forty-four seconds—0.000017% of the eight years Kail dedicated to the project. Kail realised that, letting such a tiny fraction of the experience dictate his happiness or satisfaction with the work, was absurd.

Awards, recognition, and success can’t be everything, right? Sure, they feel good, but they’re not the fuel for your passion. It’s so tempting to define them as the ultimate goal or to use them as a measure of your fulfillment. We must, MUST, resist the idea of pursuing an endeavor solely for the prize waiting at the end.

The legendary investor Paul Graham offers powerful advice: keep your identity small. Focus on the work and the principles behind it, not on a grandiose, self-promoting vision.

But who wants to believe it was none of your efforts that got you to where you are today?

Resist the temptation to look back at your unlikely success and claim you knew it all along. In reality, what was more likely is that you worked hard, enjoyed the process, and were, at times, lucky. Of course, you couldn’t predict the future—or if you did, it was more belief than knowledge.

Resist the temptation to work only for a prize.

“I see my friends,” a struggling comedian once said to Jerry Seinfeld, “and they’re making a lot of money. They’re married. They have big houses. They’re moving up.” “They’re moving up?” Seinfeld asks. “Are you out of your mind?” He points in the direction of the stage—“this is such a special thing. This has nothing to do with ‘making it.’”

Resist the temptation to tell your kids that "making it” is more important than the experience itself.

Because it's a lie.

To keep going and going and going, and doing and doing and doing what excites you? That's the real deal.

The experiences that remind you of why you love what you do? That's the win.

Hold lightly to wherever you think your hard work is going to take you.

Rather than imagining we’re part of a grand scheme of perfectly-unfolding events we orchestrate ourselves, concentrate on the task at hand—and strive for excellence in it.

Defer the accolades and keep focusing on what brought us to this point because, frankly speaking, that’s what will keep us moving forward.