Eddie Hall has opened up about the pressure young people face to follow a conventional path in life, insisting he would rather see people remain true to themselves than change simply to fit in.
Hall’s own route was anything but conventional.
Long before he became World’s Strongest Man, the Brit struggled at school and was eventually expelled after being suspended on numerous occasions.
Speaking to Rob Moore about what he would tell his 13-year-old self, Hall reflected on the expectations placed on children from an early age and why he believes they shouldn’t be afraid of taking a different route.
“If I could go back in time, I would say keep being you, because there’s so much pressure in the world to be a certain person, to do well at school, to get GCSEs, to go to college, to go to university, to get a decent job, to get a house, to pay your bills and to have a family,” Hall said.
“There’s so much pressure on kids these days and there’s no one there to say, ‘You know what? F*** everybody else. You just concentrate on you,’” he said.
Hall had already experienced that pressure himself as a teenager.
He revealed elsewhere in the conversation that he had been suspended from school “probably a hundred times” before eventually being expelled.
Rather than following his friends through their GCSEs, Hall ended up finding another outlet after his parents told him he couldn’t stay at home doing nothing.
“I said, ‘Well, I’ll go to the gym then.’ All my mates were at school studying for their GCSEs and I was going to the gym and doing deadlifts, biceps, triceps, and that’s where the journey began,” Hall said.
That decision ultimately proved life-changing.
The gym provided Hall with somewhere to channel his energy and eventually put him on the path towards Strongman, where he would go on to reach the very top of the sport.
Looking back, Hall believes youngsters who struggle to conform can receive the opposite message to the one they actually need.
“Everyone’s there to tell you how s*** you are and how worthless you are and how you’re going to amount to nothing. That’s what they’re there to do at school, in my opinion, these days,” Hall said.
“If you’re an outcast, if you’ve got ADHD and you’re bouncing off the walls, they want you out. They want you f****** gone,” he said.
Hall’s experience eventually took him from being expelled to becoming World’s Strongest Man, and he now believes finding your own direction is more important than meeting somebody else’s expectations.
“If you’re that person in the world right now, just enjoy your life, be yourself, find your fix and you’ll be just fine,” Hall said.
Featured image credit: Rob Moore / YouTube / Eddie Hall / Instagram
