Advice to my 16 year old self* (or the day I went back to school)

*like my 16 year old self would have listened!

I read a quote on Linkedin yesterday that couldn’t have been more apt:

“Be who you needed when you were younger”

And so I arrived at my old Secondary School, Templeogue College, yesterday afternoon ready to do good and be the person I would have needed. From September 1993 to June 1999, Templeogue College was home. Six years. From aged 12 to 18.

Me Nerves Were Shot

I was nervous, because I realised a few things getting ready for this:

1. My 7 year old son is closer in age to the transition year students I was going to be talking to than me. Like WAY closer (9 years versus 25 years); and
2. When I was 16 I didn’t want, and wouldn’t really listen to, any advice from anybody, let alone some guy in his 40s whose only “connection” with me is that he happened to go to school here.

Why Was I Here?

So, how had I ended up here to start with. What was I doing back at a building I hadn't been in since June 1999, literally the last millenium?! Well, I've been looking at ways to 'give something back' or 'to help' or 'to make a difference'. I saw that one of my connections Gillian Fitpatrick had given a talk to her old school and got a notion that I might do it. I spoke with Gillian, and she recommended I email the school so I did, and BOOM, yesterday I'm talking to some transition year students.

I thought that maybe (maybe) I would possibly make a difference to someone in the class. That someone might hear something that resonated with them, and that made a difference. I thought that my journey from someone who struggled with anxiety and had a fear of public speaking but that went on to be a radio presenter who interviewed Kanye West, Usher, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and more would maybe be useful, if not inspiring.

What Did I Talk About?

I talked about being bullied for 2 years of my time in Templeogue College by people who called me monkey constantly and the toll that took on me. Cheery start, I felt. I told people who were bullying anybody to stop it, because they were being dicks. I told anybody who was being bullied to talk to someone, anyone, and that I regretted that I never did and took it all on myself;

I talked about my radio career and how, for the first 6 or 7 years of being a radio presenter I was a radio presenter with a fear of public speaking. I talked about how I was fine in a room with a microphone talking to thousands of people, but got physically ill at the thought of standing in front of people and talking;

I talked about anxiety, and how and what it looks like and feels like.

I talked about medication for anxiety;

I talked about panic attacks;

I talked about confidence, what it means, how to get it, how to lose it, and how it evolves and changes. How you might be confident standing in front of a group of people talking to them, but not confident singing or dancing in front of them, and how your perception of a challenge can completely change how you feel about it;

I talked about being weird and being different;

I talked about expectations and how what you think you know is almost certainly wrong;

I talked about the fact that some of them would be dead before they reached my age (statistically correct) and how some people from my year were dead (again, I didn’t want things to get too cheery);

I talked about how you spend most of your teens and twenties wanting to blend in, and most of the rest of your life trying to stand out and how I wished I had learned to embrace all the things that make me different and unique earlier;

I talked about being a radio presenter and being a hypnotherapist (oddly, nobody had any questions about being?lawyer…..)

I talked about NLP techniques and visualisation to increase confidence, skills and abilities, particularly in relation to public speaking

The Results?

Some of the lads literally fell asleep. As a sleep deprived father of three, my overwhelming emotion about this was jealousy. The rest of the lads held a steadfastly bored and blank expression throughout….except when there was a fart noise which (rightly) got a laugh.

I will never know if I made a difference in the lives of any of those present in any way, shape or form. As a result, the experience left me (initially) feeling a bit hollow. I had wanted to make a difference and other than dropping a C-bomb in the hallowed halls of Templeogue College, I don't know how much of a contribution I made.

If anything, it actually was quite emotionally draining. It forced me to face up to some things about myself and I hadn't in a long time. The bullying in particular. I was annoyed at myself for never really calling the lads who bullied me out on it, then or since. I've met plenty of them over the years, been friends with some of them for a time, and we've always just pretended it never happened. And in one way, it's a distant memory, but in another, it's still with me. I have a 7 year old son. If he gets bullied, I don't know what I'll tell him. There was one guy in my year who was also being picked on, and his dad told him to but his keys between his knuckles and go for the main culprit. He did, give him a good few thumps and promptly got suspended. I kind of wish I had done that too. I suppose part of me just feels like I owe it to myself to have said to them that while it's in the past and we were only kids at the time, it still wasn't ok and to think about how they would feel if someone treated their kids the way they treated me.

The Life Advice

I came up with the following 10 pieces of advice that I would (most likely) have completely ignored if they had been given to me when I was 16, but which I think are good bits of advice:

1. Everybody in this room is a weirdo pretending to be normal and hoping nobody finds out. Pretending to be something you’re not takes a lot of energy. That’s energy that you could be using to do other more important things than pretending not to be yourself;
2. You can please all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time;
3. You cannot fail until you give up and the reason most people fail is because they give up too soon;
4. Life’s not fair;
5. You can’t change the past and you cannot predict the future;
6. The mind cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined;
7. ?Often is better to ask for forgiveness than for permission;
8. Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re probably right;
9. If you want to do something, achieve something, build something, make something, then start where you are. Use what you have and do what you can;
10. ?Its’ good to talk