RULE 6

No, you cannot be everything you dream …

… unless you have the talent, education, and commitment to work for it.

Despite the almost-constant mantras of the esteem-builders, you won’t necessarily be your own drummer or follow your bliss. Heredity, effort, stamina, intelligence, and education all play a role in defining what is possible for you. I am a klutz, no amount of practice or study would have made me a ballet dancer. Someone who is tone-deaf isn’t going to be the next Christina Aguilera or Jewel; someone born with poor eyesight is unlikely to be a fighter pilot. Not everyone who wants to be a Marine will make the cut; not everyone who dreams of being a surgeon will—or can—make it.

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This may be self-evident, but the mantras also contribute to false expectations and a sense that life is unfair when reality sets in. Compared with the possibilities you would have had in past ages, your choices are nearly infinite … there are no social-class limits, caste systems, or (in general) family obligations dictating your course through life. But students who skip courses in biology and chemistry and fail to turn in their homework still somehow imagine that they can be heart surgeons as long as that is their dream. It’s not going to happen.

Students who can’t do math won’t be engineers, and kids who don’t master science won’t be knocking down any doors in Silicon Valley.

Even so, all the vaporing about “dreams” might explain the remarkable disconnect between the aspirations of so many young people and their own abilities, attitudes, and efforts.

Unfortunately, most parents and students seem to be stuck in denial.

A 2003 survey by Public Agenda found that students, parents, and teachers were confident that high school graduates were prepared for the workforce. Sixty-seven percent of high school parents were certain their little Ashleys and Kevins would have the skills to succeed at work; 78 percent of teachers were also confident that graduates were ready for work. If only it were so.

Fewer than half of the actual employers surveyed—41 percent—said that the young people they encountered had such skills.41

The same study also found that 67 percent of parents, 77 percent of teachers, and 73 percent of high school students assumed that a high school diploma meant that graduates had basic skills.

But large majorities both of employers who hired the graduates and professors who taught them scoffed at the notion. More than two-thirds of college teachers—68 percent—and 58 percent of employers thought that the diploma was no guarantee that students had mastered even basic academic skills.

So by all means dream big, but realize that your success will be determined, not by your dreaming, but by your hard work, study, and perseverance.