ADVICE TO THE 30 SOMETHING: A must read
Mark Manson
has written a very insightful article. He asked readers who were 37 and
older the advice they would
give their 30 year-old selves. This is a summary of his article about they said.
- Start saving for retirement now, not later
- Start taking care of your health now, not later: It’s not that your body suddenly breaks down — it has been breaking down all along without you noticing. The way you treat your body has a cumulative effect.
- Don’t spend time with people who don’t treat you well: Learn to say no to people, activities and obligations that don’t bring value to your life. Surround yourself with people who bring out your best parts, and who love and accept you.
- Be good to the people you care about: Appreciate those close to you. You can get money and jobs back, but you can never get time back. The age between 30 and 40 is the decade when things you thought would never happen to you or your loved ones, start to happen…parents and spouses die, babies are stillborn, friends get divorced, spouses cheat…the list goes on and on. Helping someone through these times by simply being there, listening and not judging, is an honor and will deepen your relationships in ways you probably can’t yet imagine.
- You can’t have everything. Focus on doing a few things really well: Most people arbitrarily choose their careers in their late teens or early 20s, and as with many of our choices at those ages, they are often wrong choices. It takes years to figure out what we’re good at and what we enjoy doing. But it’s better to focus on our primary strengths and maximize them over the course of a lifetime, than to half-ass something else.
- Don’t be afraid of taking risks. You can still change: The individuals with the biggest regrets are those that stay in something they know is not right. It is so easy to see days turn to weeks and weeks to years, only to wake up at 40 with a mid-life crisis for not taking action on a problem you were aware of 10 years prior, but failed to act.
- You must continue to grow and develop yourself: You have two assets that you can never get back once you’ve lost them: your body and your mind. Most people stop growing and working on themselves in their 20s. Most people in their 30s are too busy to worry about self-improvement. But if you’re one of the few who continues to educate yourself, evolve your thinking and take care of your mental and physical health, you will be light-years ahead of the pack by 40. The number one goal should be to try to become a better person, partner, parent, friend, colleague etc. — in other words, to grow as an individual.
- Nobody (still) knows what they’re doing. Get used to it: Unless you are already dead — mentally, emotionally and socially — you cannot anticipate your life 5 years into the future. It will not develop as you expect. So stop assuming you can plan far ahead and get over the control issue about your life’s direction. Most of what you think is important now will seem unimportant in 10 or 20 years and that’s OK. That’s called growth. Just try to remember not to take yourself so seriously all the time, and be open to it.
- Invest in your family. It’s worth it: Spend more time with your folks. Your parents are getting old and you need to start considering how your relationship with them is going to function. And you also need to contemplate creating a family of your own. You need to get over any problems you have with your parents and find a way to make it work with them. One reader wrote, “You’re too old to blame your parents for any of your own short-comings. At 20 you could get away with it; you’d just left the house. At 30, you’re a grown-up. Seriously. Move on."
- Be kind to yourself — respect yourself: Be a little selfish and do something for yourself every day, something different once a month and something spectacular every year. Treat yourself better. There is no one who cares about you or thinks about your life a fraction of what you do.
You can read the full article by Mark Manson here: http://markmanson.net/10-life-lessons-excel-30s#ixzz2yOLyaOeM
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