Let’s turn snowflakes into snowdrops

LIFE can be a struggle sometimes — so you have to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. It’s a message I try to convey to young people I meet and it’s an important message to impart at a vital time. Because a generation of ‘snowflakes’ is just not going to cut it in a tough world.

Shirking from discomfort and coddling ourselves from challenging ideas can lead to fragility and stagnation. Instead, millennials should aim to be snowdrops — delicate to the eye but the garden’s toughest operators. When the ground is hard, branches bare and everything but the burliest evergreens have deserted the garden, these flowers rear their heads. They understand that thuggish plants and weeds will try in vain to conquer them.

And they understand that failure is always on the horizon. But they raise their quivering heads all the same.

Snowdrops cannot tame nature, in the same way we cannot mould the world around us to behave in exactly the way we would like. But entering the world with a realistic understanding that it is tough, but you can be tougher, is what will ultimately set you up to flourish. So the next time you’re at a job interview or perhaps the next time your son or daughter finds themselves studying the ‘right’ answers to give, remember that perfect yet delicate isn’t always what cuts it.

Bosses who understand how the world works, bosses who have lived — and ultimately bosses you want to work for — know that those who have been brave enough to fail and learned from that failure are who they ultimately want on their side.