Taking it old school

In talking with a friend of mine recently about our children, He had a 15 and 17 year old boys, and me with my 8 year old twins and 4 year old, we came to the conclusion that “old school” really was better.

When we were kids and played football with our neighborhood friends, rarely did we break bones or on rare occasion would we concuss each other. There were no pads, helmets, or adults supervision in these games, so how did we do it? Even if there were helmets, they were leather, so how did those pro’s not kill each other on the field. Self preservation. We didn’t want to hurt the person we were tackling, even if we really disliked this person. Our self-preservation kicked in and we did what we had to not hurt ourselves and take care of business.
In “Old school” times, our parents didn’t call colleges for us, fill out applications, demand we studied for finals or SAT’s, talk to coaches for us, make us wear helmets, not let us climb trees, we took care of business for ourselves. If we didn’t, we failed, quit, didn’t try, or headed down the wrong path.

Translate to today’s parenting and business relationships. Because our parents let us fail, we learned life lessons, and self-preservation. It’s ok to let your children fail, it teaches them life lessons. They have to learn failure to succeed. Encouragement to keep moving forward and progressing in key. Our parents did it, and think about what we learned from that. We fail in business all the time. Do we quit? No. We pick up the pieces, learn from mistakes and better ourselves, just like we did “Old School.”