Important Life Lessons I Learned Too Late in Life

Have you ever heard the remark that age is only relevant if you are cheese? All of my career it seemed I was one of the youngest guys in the room. Then, overnight, I looked around and was shocked to discover I was the oldest guy in the room. Working on my third career, I don’t know why that should have been a surprise to me. It was one of the many important life lessons.

It was though … a reality check. But why? Who knows, especially since I have no fear about the value I bring and my ability to keep delivering relevance in a young person’s world going through rapid change. Luckily the feeling did not last long.

Always keep learning: The Story and Zen of Getting Things Done

Here are the top lessons I learned too late in life:

Do not rest on past successes

There is nothing more dangerous to life success than a great last result, is there? We are ‘only as good as our next result.’ Stay paranoid.

Embrace change

Darwin said it was not the strongest of the species that survived, but the ablest to adapt to change. There will be more change in the next five years than we’ve seen in the past 50. Get excited by change. Be part of the most movements that you can. Help shake things up.

Important life lessons … hustle is the flipside to fear

When I wanted to start my Digital Firestorm blog,I had no idea how to build a nice website or how to build a community following. I was also pretty scared of failing again. What if I wrote for years and no one ended up going to my website?

What if no one cared about small business growth? And then I realized, even if only ten people signed up, I would still feel awesome about making a difference in 10 people’s lives. Still, need more encouragement to go out there and make it happen?

Take a note from this quote from Richard Branson –“If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity, but you are not sure you can do it, say yes — then learn how to do it later!”Stop fearing. Start doing.

You can go fast alone, but you go further together

When you work alone, you can move fast. There’s no red tape. There’s no management that you have to check in with. There’s no team you have to collaborate with.

So what does that mean? You can create and test with an incredible amount of speed. However, it’s really hard to go far alone. For example, I love writing for my blog. However, I can only write so much material every week (it’s pretty intensive regarding time invested). So I can continue doing this writing all by myself to build an audience, or I could work smarter by working with others.

Make yourself a project

Hairdressing icon Vidal Sassoon was famous for having said: “The only place you’ll find success coming before work is in a dictionary.”We have to work on ourselves. Put pressure on ourselves. Critique our days.

Give back to society. Be our own very best coaches and cheering squads. All of this applies as much to our personal lives as for our business lives.

Work can be fun

You know that feeling you get when your alarm rings at 7 AM in the morning? That feeling of dread? Guess what? It doesn’t have to be that way for the next 50 years of your life. Find work that you’re passionate about.

Find a mission that you want to get behind 100%. Find your calling. Do that, and you will wake up with a renewed sense of energy.

Happiness is a state of mind, not a destination

Looking back on my life, the unhappiest moments of my life occurred when I always thought I had to achieve a certain goal to be happy. That’s not the way happiness works.

You can be happy right now. Be happy that you’re alive. You’re breathing. You’re here in this incredible moment that we call life. That gives you all the reasons you need to be happy.