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"Teach me everything you wish you would have known growing up"

 I saw this post the other day on LinkedIn; not necessarily appropriate for the site, but I loved the Meme, so I'll share it here. A picture of a boy and says, "Don't buy me everything you wish you could have had growing up, teach me everything you wish you would have known growing up." What's funny about that statement is that when you are in college, that is half of the young men's conversations. "Oh man, if I only knew then what I know now, I'd have ________." Think testosterone-filled statements. Fast forward 20 years, and I have two incredible daughters and the sentiment doesn't seem to correlate. So why did this Meme catch my eye?

My daughters are young impressionable, and that's about the only similarities between my youth and theirs. Ok, that's a little broad-stroked, but the significant difference between my youth and theirs is social media, and as far as I'm concerned, that is such a difference you really can't even compare the two! Therefore you have to change the Meme a little, too; if I were you, what do I wish I knew. 

What I wish I knew, what matters; that's what I wish I knew, so cliche. Allow me to dig in a little deeper. My mentor, Terry Houston, rest in peace, my man, put up the book "Snowball Effect" at a white elephant party; I needed that book! So I got it :-). My biggest takeaway from the entire book, it's a big ass book for that time of my life, was internal vs. external scorecard. That's what matters. And it seems like we go through this whole existence trying to figure that out.

We drive nice cars, we go on elaborate vacations, we spend the hell out of money, and we all know it doesn't matter. Yet we do it. Why? Our society is purely driven by external scorecards. Even our education system is based on external scorecards. And we wonder why we have such a problem with depression/anxiety etc., at alarming rates for our poor youth. Social media is one fat external scorecard; what a disease, it is fostering this what people think matters. And if there is one thing I do know, that's what people think doesn't matter! My grandpa, Bud, had the best line EVER "Don't ever try to figure out what someone else is thinking" At the time, I didn't understand how valuable that line was/is. It doesn't matter what they are thinking, so don't waste your time even trying! 

This Meme had me on my heels because at a super young age, I was trying to introduce that concept to my kiddos. I think generally, life got in the way, and the messaging hasn't been consistent, so that Meme gave me an actional item to continue down that road of teaching my children what I wish I knew at their age. And that is, internal scorecards matter, and external scorecards don't. 

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