Dad You Suck: And other things my children tell me. Tim Dowling

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       INTRODUCTION

      I am sitting at a boardroom table in the offices of a PR company, interviewing an ex-Apprentice contestant called Raef. Though he was booted off the show in week nine, after Alan Sugar dismissed him as ‘a lot of hot air’, Raef remains possessed of an unshakeable self-belief. I find this irritating, and I have to keep reminding myself that it’s not Raef’s fault he believes in himself. It’s probably something to do with the way he was raised.

      Raef is in the middle of a digressive burst of false modesty, which, I think to myself, is probably the only kind of modesty he has ever known. As he speaks I flip through my reporter’s notepad, looking for a question I may have scribbled down earlier and forgotten about, a question searching and incisive enough to pierce Raef’s shiny carapace of confidence. Instead, I find a page on which one of my children has written ‘DAD YOU SUCK’ in large block capitals, using a marker pen.

      When I get home an hour later, there is a new Personal Power newsletter in my email inbox. I’ve been receiving these regular motivational updates from an internet life coach ever since I signed up for an online course while writing a newspaper feature about life coaching. This was months ago, but I don’t know how to make the emails stop. These days I rarely read beyond the subject line, which usually says something like, ‘Hi Tim – Self-Confidence Is A Magic Key’ or, ‘Hi Tim – Happiness Is All Around You If You Look’.

      This latest newsletter is headed, ‘Hi Tim – How Would It Feel If You Knew Why You Were Here?’ and goes on to detail a prolonged exercise in СКАЧАТЬ