What we require in life is backbone, not just wishbone
January 29, 2025
This is something that I said during a conversation I had with one of my children at the weekend. He is coming to the end of his time at university and is beginning to think about what he might like to do for his next step. I was stressing to him that you need to work to develop backbone and to understand that working hard is fundamental to getting your feet in to the working world. Too many people, I fear, simply don’t understand that hard work is critical to success in this world.
Dreaming dreams is so key to offering young people a sense of purpose and I believe this is something that we should be helping young people to do at school. It’s vital to learn at a young age that small steps of progress are worth celebrating and that setbacks mustn’t define us but more importantly refine us. As they grow we can then encourage them to develop a sense of fortitude and resilience so that as they leave school or university they are more prepared for the outside world. After all, those people that run successful businesses have backbone in spades! So let’s help our young people to develop backbone, and not merely wishbone.
