The average life span is 4,000 weeks. Put like that, it doesn’t sound much does it? Life’s short so the usual rules apply: make the most of every day, tell the people to whom you are closest that you love them and spend your time with the human equivalent of radiators, not drains.

But, there’s another thing you should do and it’s something we care about deeply. Focus on your strengths and spend less time worrying about your weaknesses. Turn your strengths into super strengths and give yourself the best chance of becoming the very best version of you. More importantly, encourage your children to do the same and help them realise that, whilst it’s impossible to be brilliant at everything, it’s certainly possible to be brilliant at some things. In fact, that’s how teams work best and the most effective teams have a combination of skills and experiences designed to complement, not compete with each other.

Picture the scene. You’re in an appraisal at work. Your boss explains the things that he thinks you’re not good at and outlines a series of ideas to help you improve them. In fact, he pegs your salary and bonus on you doing just that. That’s called predictable management by numbers and it probably leaves you pretty demoralised. Picture the same scene in which your boss tells you at the start of the meeting how brilliant you are at communicating and presenting and how she’d like you to focus on getting even better at these because that’s the way you can best enjoy your job and help the team succeed. It would be a game changer for you and you’d walk out of that office singing “Zippity doo dah”, for the rest of the day.

Now, here’s the thing. Your children at home and our children on our many courses are no different. Tell them what they’re good at and help them get better at those things and you will transform how they feel about themselves very quickly. Like all of us, children are at their best when their passions are being supported and when their super strengths are being developed. It’s why my company exists and it’s what gets us up in the mornings.

So, the next time you’re at a parents evening and the Physics teacher is bemoaning your child’s lack of progress in that subject, tell him how proud you are of their recent English essay and remind him that we can’t all be good at everything.

– Hugo Shephard, Managing Director at Role Models

If you’d like to find out more about our Life Skills Courses, then please click here