OPINION
By Michael Wilkes
My style of youth work is done with a basketball in the hand, a bike between the legs or a walking track under foot. It’s often so much easier to talk with guys when we are doing something. Although this current season I have not had the luxury to go offsite so much, and so the basketball has become the favoured option.
We chat and shoot hoops, we play one-on-one and sit down for a breather and talk some more.
The funny thing is though if I am honest, I ain’t very good at basketball. And for some of the students it’s the same. For every 10 shots, we may get one in. And if the success of our time was measured on how many hoops we got in, most of the boys would consider our time together a failure. Yet they don’t. Because the number of hoops shot is not the measure of success. I used to do high rise abseiling for a job. At the time I considered it the best job in the world.
But window cleaning day in day out began to wear thin. I loved rigging, and hanging on ropes, but I struggled with the cycle of cleaning the same windows every three to six months. I needed a new measure of success. And I remember the moment where I realised for me, a good day was when I’d had a good conversation on rope.
That realisation was gold for me. It helped me realise what I valued at work. I valued connection, going deep, and sharing life.
And it was the sort of job where we could achieve the task well and still have a good chat.
That light bulb moment changed how I measured success for me at work and breathed life into what was becoming stagnant.
So today I hope that if you too are feeling like things are a little dry, maybe take a moment to consider what success looks like for you. What are the bits that give you life. And maybe it’s time to lean in and focus on those bits a little more.
– Michael Wilkes is a Living Well Trust Youth Worker
