I know this looks like a fancy office. It is not my office, as you know. I’m at home today. Sometimes I stay home and do work here. My wife Dawn goes crazy because we have this giant table. I mean it’s huge and it’s in the dining room. I think Vikings once sat here and ate.
I love to spread my dreams, plans, books and notes all over it. Now my kids have begun their plans so they use the table and it ruins the ambience of Dawn’s home so she gets upset. But today we’re here and talking about a subject that has been hitting me a lot lately.
There’s this one complaint that I keep hearing—it’s not even a complaint, it’s more of a regret—and it’s mostly from men, some women, but it’s mostly from men who are around age 40 and up. I’ve been hearing this over and over again—at every party, every social event, every sporting event I go to. They say something like this, “Hey Bo, you know what my biggest regret is? That I didn’t have anybody to push me when I was a kid.” I keep hearing that over and over and over again. “I wish that I had somebody that pushed me when I was a kid.”
And now they’re in their 40s and 50s, and they have that regret. Then it made me think of our conversations later. In that same conversation the person says this, “Well, I don’t want to be that parent,” or “I don’t want to be that guy or that dad that pushes his kids.” And I’m thinking, they’re saying two different things. They’re saying, “I have regrets that no one every pushed me, yet I don’t want to be that dad,” or “I don’t want to be that guy who pushes people.” That’s an interesting conversation, right?
You’ve got to decide. You’ve got to decide who you’re going to be because people need to be demanded of. They need to be pushed sometimes. Maybe “pushed” is the wrong word. Maybe “pull” is a better word. Maybe “guide”, maybe “pointed in a direction” is better. But you’ve got to think about it. If you have regrets that no one ever pushed you or guided you or pointed you in a direction then you want to be that for your kids, you want to be that for your clients and you want to be that for your friends.
You want to be the person who demands of them. The only way to do that is to demand of yourself.
If you’ve been following me long enough, you know there are about four or five books that I read over and over again. I don’t read 100 books a year. I read five. And those five I’ve been reading for years. One of them is this book called the Gold Mine Effect, which is written by Rasmus Ankersen.
I love this book. One of the chapters is titled “Not Pushing Your Kids Is Irresponsible.” Not pushing your kids is irresponsible. In our culture, everyone’s trying not to be that parent that pushes their kids. Well, your kids need to be pushed, they need to be guided, and they need to be pointed in a direction.
In this book they did a study of virtuosos—pianists, violinists, elite athletes. In this particular study, they looked at violinists. They took the top 24 violinists in the world and asked them, “Were you just called by God to play the violin? Or did the violin call out to you and you walked over to it, picked it up and started playing?” And of those violinists, not one of them had that experience.
All of them had the same experience, which was this—a parent or a coach or a mentor said to them, “Play that violin. And play it again. And play it again. And play it again. And put in the hours.” What the kids fell in love with wasn’t necessarily the violin. They fell in love with the improvement they made.
If you have regrets that no one was there to guide you or coach you or push you—to make you great—then maybe you’re that person for your kids. Maybe you’re that person for your clients. I can give you firsthand experience. When I do this with my kids and my clients, I’m pretty heavy handed. I go, “Look, we are going to out-train everybody. This year we’re going to work harder than anybody.” And that’s what we do.
A lot of you might think that’s too hard or too tough. I’m telling you clients respect that and they love it. They get this gleam in their eye. My kids, when we say, “No sugar for two weeks.” They complain and say they want it, but deep down inside them they get this little gleam in their eye, this little fire in their belly that says, “Good. I’m going to see what I’m made of. I’m going to see if I have the discipline.”
Quit being so easy on people. Demand of them and they will respect you more. You wanted it as a kid. Think where your life would be right now if you did have somebody to point you in that direction. Why don’t YOU be that person for your kids, for your clients, and for everybody around you?
You raise the standard. You become the standard bearer of where this world is going, how we’re going to perform, how we’re going to compete—that makes you a very valuable person in our world. That makes you very valuable to everyone around you because we’re shorthanded on people like that.
Everyone else is trying to be nice and not be pushy. Don’t be one of those. We’ve got enough of those in the world. Get out there. Raise the bar. Make them play up to your level. Push them, if you have to.
No regrets.
