2. Take piano lessons, go to football practice, spend your Saturdays in science museums. Whatever it is, find your ‘thing’.
3. Learn only enough about losing to know you don’t like it. Build that resilience. Have high self-esteem heading into puberty.
4. Study hard at school. Raise your hand in class. Stay up late doing homework. Win your teachers’ respect.
5. Decide how you want your dreams to be narrowed down. Focus on developing specific strengths and skills. Set yourself high standards.
6. Realise you won’t get anywhere just by ‘hanging around’ with people. Politely decline invitations to parties at university — instead make short-lived connections that are useful to your professional development.
7. Get a place on a graduate scheme at a listed company and move to a big city.
8. Establish an online presence. Start creating and sharing content. Make sure the right connections are seeing it. Maintain your personal brand.
9. Get offered a job after the graduate scheme and haggle up your salary. Work insane hours.
10. Unwind by going to the gym and scrolling through your LinkedIn feed. Enjoy a comfortable lifestyle without going into debt.
11. Manage up. Get promoted. Feel that you’re somehow ahead of people. More accomplished, more specialised. More capable.
12. Focus on nothing but your career for the decade that just whizzed by. Become a board member on the same day you find your first grey hair.
13. Hire people, fire people, get it done. Make big decisions, outrun the pressure. Buy cars, houses and boats and never EVER ask yourself: ‘who am I doing all this for?’
14. Be approached to write an article about being successful. Sell the idea that somebodies act like this, while nobodies act like that. Encourage people to follow your path to success rather than find their own.
15. Watch them rely on medication to treat their anxiety. Know they might have otherwise had happy, enriching lives with close family and friends — and been thankful for what they have in this world.
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