This is a letter I wrote to my son on his 17th birthday.

To my Son Alex on his 17th Birthday
Dear Alex,
You are now at a fabulous stage of your life where you, and only you, are in 100% control of your future and what sort of life you will lead.
You will make choices every day of your life that will impact on your own happiness and the happiness of those around you that you love and who love you, which is your family and your friends.
In time you will find a wife and have a family of your own. How happy this family becomes is also entirely up to you. In fact just how and where you choose to live your life is now entirely up to you.
Nobody can tell you how to think or how to feel. Those choices are yours alone.
I will be here for you as long as I can to give you any help and advice that I can, you can always rely on that.
But please don’t think that this means you will always be able to come to me to borrow money to get out of any trouble you may have got yourself into.
The reason we make mistakes in life, is so that we learn from them. The only real mistake you can make is not learning the lesson and repeating the mistake – and that just costs you your time, which is your most valuable possession.
Some people go right through life, never learning from their mistakes, stuck in a rut of fear and unhappiness. Just go to the poorer sections of town and have a look at how some people choose to live their lives.
But you have the ability to BE and DO anything that you want. The key to a long and happy life is to choose carefully and not be afraid to change your mind if you want to.
That is, you can choose what you will do to earn a living and who you will spend your time with. Please choose carefully what you read and watch, as this will have a massive impact on your thinking. You don’t have to make one choice now and live with it forever. As you gain in life’s experience and develop wisdom, you can change what you do and how you do it. This is after all what makes life so interesting.
The quality of your life will be governed by the quality of your thinking.
My gift to you today, is a book that I hope you will read and re-read until the message sinks in. I have met the author and he is an amazing man. He has signed the book and I hope that you will treasure it and get some real value from it. I hope this will be the start of your library as you collect books that can teach you a great deal on any subject you can imagine.
Give everything you do 110% effort and you will get so much more back out of life. Be generous with your time, your money and most importantly, your love and it will be repaid tenfold. That is how the universe works.
As the Chinese say “May you live in interesting times” – and I know that you do.
I love you and I am very proud of you.