The other week I was in the bath and my eldest son Oli came through to talk to me as he was struggling to get to sleep.
As he often does.
We had a little chat and he went off.
I then heard Alex, my wife, talking to him downstairs.
And then in his room.
It turns out he’d left the bathroom and gone into his stepsister’s room.
Taken her new alarm clock, her purse and £10 of toy money (which he thought was real).
Before going down to the kitchen and taking £5 out of my wallet on the side in the kitchen.
I knew his mum had had suspicions that he’d taken the dog walker’s money before we went on holiday.
As I hadn’t heard any update to that, I texted to see what had happened.
Turns out he had.
And some other money.
And some money from the stall at the village fete.
Now I wasn’t overly worried.
I think most kids try stealing at some point.
I took my cousin’s bike light.
And a pack of Wagon Wheels from the shop near my school FYI.
But, obviously, it needed to be addressed.
I’ve approached it a few different ways with him over the last few weeks.
And one of those was helping him realise that ‘crime doesn’t pay’.
“A robber may be up to start with” I began.
“But when he goes to prison and his friends and family don’t want to see him, he loses so much more”
“In the same way that you might be a few pounds up if you steal from us. But we won’t then trust you. We won’t be able to let you do more and more things. We won’t want to spend our money on all the things we do together, your clubs and your hobbies. And, to be honest, we won’t want to spend time with you if you’re stealing from us”
He seemed to ‘get that’.
And, along with the other things we talked about, it’s led to him not stealing since.
As far as we know!
So, crime doesn’t pay.
The long term consequences are never worry the short term gain.
Like eating shitty food.
We know it tastes nice.
We get it.
If I could live off cheesecake and ice cream and still have a body I liked the look and feel of, I’d love that.
But I can’t.
It’s not worth it.
That short term gain isn’t good enough to justify the long term consequences.
Some people seem to be able to have both.
I’m not one of them.
Accepting that makes it a really easy choice.
I can eat good food and be slim, full of energy and happy.
Or I can eat shite and not be.
We often find people reach a moment where something ‘just clicks’.
They accept the above.
And it becomes a much easier choice.
Much love,
Jon ‘Hamburglar’ Hall and Matt ‘Top Cat’ Nicholson
P.S. We’ve got some great stories coming up over the next few days from out latest batch of member successes 🙂
P.P.S. As always, want to find out more about what we do? Go here –> myrise.co.uk/briefing-meeting.
