The Most Important Lessons People Often Learn Too Late in Life (Once They’re Almost Dead)
Elderly regrets are painful.
I spent some of my teenage years helping to clean retirement villages. When there was piss, sh*t, or vomit to clean up I got the call.
After I steam cleaned the carpet with the R2D2-looking machine, I’d often help myself to a bottomless hot chocky and sit down with the old folks.
These delightful souls could talk the head off a chicken.
Many of them had regrets. As they were close to the end of their lives, they’d often confide in me with their deepest, darkest secrets.
A pattern emerged: they couldn’t go back and change the past. All they could do was dwell on it.
For most of you reading this, it’s not too late to learn these important life lessons.
Life will slap you in the freaking mouth when you’re comfortable as hell
Navy seal David Goggins said this.
In my life I have way too many comfortable friends. They think everything is fine and they can keep doing the same old crap forever.
One friend right now is at a crossroads in his career. His employer has told him in multiple cryptic ways that they don’t value or give a damn about him.
Yet he stays working there.
It’s clear he will get fired, and it’s the middle of a recession. How that doesn’t motivate him is beyond me. He just keeps treading water drowning in past comfort.
Don’t be like this. Comfort is a sign it’s time to adapt and grow. When a tree stops growing it dies. Humans are the same.
We need growth to be motivated to wake up and crush the day.
Everything in life is a game
I was a nerd that played computer games in my younger days. Everyone said it was a waste of time and it wouldn’t help me in adult life.
Those morons were wrong.
Computer games taught me to see everything in life as a game. The trouble is many people don’t see it that way.
They think the game they’ve chosen has to be fair. Or they think the game should be easier than it is. But that’s not how it works in the gaming world.
After all, 99% of games have cheat codes for a reason.
When you see everything as a game it becomes about play. You play the game to see where it leads and follow your curiosity.
The key is to choose the right games.
For example, if you play a World War 2 computer game and hate guns then you’ll hate every minute. But if you’re a car nut and play a Formula One computer game you’ll be in heaven.
Choose the right life games.
Sell or be sold
Some people hate to sell. It’s evil.
They use labels like “sellout” to describe people who sell products and services or monetize their hobby. Screw those people. The way it works in life is you either sell or be sold. Every employer sells. Every entrepreneur sells. Every salesperson sells.
Sales is just a fancy business word for persuasion.
If you refuse to persuade you’ll never reach your potential. Without persuasion you’re stuck in the La La Land of Luck.
Good luck winning in life when everything is based on chance. Chances are you get ignored or get used and abused by a corporation.
The cure is simple. Learn how to persuade. Many people learn to persuade in a dishonest way and use psychological manipulation.
The superpower I have is I learned to persuade ethically.
That’s the level you want to get to. You don’t want to force people to buy into your ideas. You want them to choose your idea based on your clear explanation and the benefits offered.
Money runs the world
Virtu-signaling choir boys love to trash the concept of money.
They want you to think it’s evil so they can distract you and make more money for themselves. That’s the true evil.
Money is necessary. Without money your entire life will be a struggle. Large amounts of mental space will get wasted thinking about money.
Think about a bankrupt person. The decision to buy a $20 pizza is a big one. They have to analyze, plan, and budget for it. Eating pizza is a low-impact decision on the quality of your life but if you have to overthink it, well, what a waste.
The answer to money problems is to make more money.
None of us are too dumb to do this. The skills you have determine the value you create. If you need more money you need more skills – or to upgrade your skills.
That’s no reason to get angry. Just do it.
Dumb execution always outperforms smart ideas
Two people in my life come to mind.
Both have great ideas. They’re ideas I’ve never heard of before that could change the trajectory of humanity. But neither of them has executed any part of the idea.
Meanwhile, someone else I know had the common idea to start a cafe that sells coffee. Nothing else. It’s one of the most overdone ideas in the world. Yet after 5 years he has a booming business and financial freedom.
Ideas don’t matter. Anyone can dream up anything, especially in business.
What matters is dumb execution that involves:
- Habits
- Discipline
- Tedious tasks
- Boring repetition
- Regular iteration
- Basic networking
If you want more results in life then focus on execution. Because nobody gives a flying f*ck about an idea with no traction.
A moment I guarantee will make you cry
In the tv show the office, a character named Andy Bernard said something I will never forget:
“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”
Every time I re-read that line I get a tear in my eye.
One of my fondest memories was working in banking with two amazing people. Every day with them was pure heaven.
But I didn’t cherish it and assumed we’d work together for the rest of our careers.
Eventually our team got broken up. Now I think about those good old days all the time and wish I’d made better use of them. I wish I’d spent less time writing or going to social events, and more time at work with them just talking crap over coffee.
Much of what you take for granted in life is part of what you’ll one day call the good old days. Spot these days before they come to an end, and be present in them.
Find one of these bizarre activities
Much of people’s unhappiness comes from a bizarre place.
They don’t spend enough time in a flow state. I’m lucky that I get to spend a lot of my week writing online. It forces me into a flow state where I access my personal zone of genius, while I lose myself, and my perception of time is altered.
During these moments in time, my focus is narrow, I operate in a higher state of consciousness, and my creativity goes up by 10x.
Every single person should find an activity that lets them access this level of flow.
Spend time with your storm poopers
I have a 3 month old daughter.
My favorite baby outfit is one with a picture of a stormtrooper from Star Wars with the text “Storm Pooper” below. She poops more than anyone I know.
Not everyone has kids, but for those who do, I frequently hear “I wish I could spend more time with little Johnny.”
A lesson people often learn too late is that your kids will never be young again. That’s why I’ve made it a brutal habit to always drop everything and not feel guilty when it’s daddy-daughter time.
Spending time with her gives meaning to what I do.
Don’t let your kids grow old without watching their journey and being a part of their lives. The rewards are endless when you do.
You can endure more adversity than you think
Our threshold for bad sh*t is way higher than we realize.
A family member is going through chemo right now and typically hasn’t had to deal with a lot of stress. Before the treatment started they dreaded every moment.
They had no clue how they would survive.
Now they’re in remission and have 5 months of chemo left and they’ve got used to the daily pain and not feeling like they want to eat. Their body has become skin and bone and all their hair is gone forever.
But somehow they smile. Somehow they endure.
They don’t take what they have for granted anymore. And they’ve become a better person. More vulnerable, more family-orientated, more selfless.
Surviving hell is what humans are built for.
Proactive productivity is the only answer
Distraction is the default.
Your email inbox is full of open loops and rabbit holes. So if you’re not proactive about productivity then the default will take over. Your attention will bounce around like a ping pong ball, before it runs out of energy and gets sleepy at 3 pm.
The modern human has to be amazing at attention management above all else.
What works in one season of life doesn’t work in another
I attended a conference years ago where Gary Vee spoke.
He said so many people’s lives are built on one pillar, one arbitrage, one freebie their family gave them, one strategy, one connection.
The trouble is life is made up of seasons. In one season that single hack might work well. But when the seasons change it no longer works.
I’ve seen this with my writer friends. Many of them built huge audiences on single platforms. Then the algorithm changed and they could no longer reach as many people. So they had no backup plan and ended up back at cubicle jobs.
To survive the seasons of life you not only need to be practical – you need to diversify.
You need a few small bets in a few areas. You need to plant a few seeds because you’ll never know which ones will grow into a forest.
Don’t get caught out in the cold in the middle of winter in your underpants because you thought your one hack would last a lifetime. It won’t.
The Queen of England tells you everything you need to know
A tweet the other day reminded me the Queen of England has been dead for 5 months.
She had more money, fame, and connections than almost anyone in history. But let’s be honest … you hadn’t thought of her at all until just now.
In my life, my grandma died a few years ago. She was someone I was close to. I thought I’d miss her every day and always think about her. But until right now, I’ve only just thought of her.
The lesson people learn too late in life is this: legacy is overrated. The living don’t spend all of their waking hours thinking about the dead.
We have better things to do.
So stop building useless crap for the afterlife and actually live a good life right now.
Tim Denning
Πηγή: timdenning.substack.com
