Turning 29 + 1
“Life is a game of three halves. In the first, you worry about what people think of you. In the second, you don’t care what people think about you. But in the last third, you realize no one was thinking about you anyway.” — Unknown
On July 6th, 2015, I’ll be 30. For sake of simplicity, let’s call that 29 +1. Shit happens. It’ll be like experiencing the Kubler-Ross model: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and eventually acceptance. Hopefully I’ll get through all of this in a short time frame and be ready to spring ahead into the 2nd of three halves of my life. Meanwhile, I want to share my learning from 1st of 3 halves of my life — let me know what you think.
If you are 29-x where x>=0, you’ll inevitably be 29+1 (sorry for the spoiler there!). Yes, life sucks. This is my attempt to make it a little better for you.
If you are 29+x, where x >=1, please do leave a note (you’ll be able to select any block of text and create a note) on what you think.
For sake of completeness, if you’re 29+1, please join me in some sobbing. :)
1. Chalk your plan to realize your dreams.
Often most people have childhood dreams that go unrealized for life. This is your time to get serious and re-think what your priorities are, and how to reach there. If you want to be the President of the country or the CEO of the next Facebook, or be on the 30 under 30 list, this is it. Things that you do now will define/re-define who you will grow up to be. Do not comfortably convince yourself out of the hard work you need to do in this decade saying that there can be exceptions to the norm. Exceptions are well, exceptions.
Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming. — Coach John Wooden (TED talk)
This is the absolute best definition of success I came across in my entire life. It emphasizes on success as a state of peace of mind knowing that you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming. It’s easier than ever to come up with excuses to not give your best, and blame on so many things around you — and that is precisely what this definition of success tries to comprehend. It also focuses on another important part which is that you try to become the best you are capable of becoming. This is something that I want to cover in the next learning.
2. Know who you truly are.
This is the best time to understand who you truly are. Are you good at programming? at arts? at finances? at marketing? Whatever that is, try to become an expert in that field. The world is unforgiving for non-experts and will be more so, in the decades ahead. Know your limitations during this time. You cannot figure out everything at first, but at least try to get a sense of where you want to end up landing.
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude. Conversely, highly skilled individuals tend to underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks that are easy for them are also easy for others.
In simpler words: Don’t be as stupid to not realize your stupidity. At the same time, do realize your key strengths, and do not underestimate yourself. All to say, this is the time you have, to realize who you truly are.
3. Believe in yourself.
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” — Unknown
Just when you finally realize who you truly are or what you believe you’re capable of becoming, the world around you will mock you for things that you don’t even care about in the first place. Don’t let your belief be effected by people who don’t know or don’t care about your dreams.
You got a dream. You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period. — Pursuit of Happyness.
This is your litmus test. Almost always you can ignore all the negative advice you get from folks who did not do something themselves. The only exception is when the person knows you well enough and gives you a word of caution.
4. Love failure, fail fast and fail enough
It’s ok lose to opponent! Must not lose to fear — Mr. Miyagi in Karate Kid III
It’s OK to fail. When you grow up, almost exclusively your regrets will be things that you never had the courage to do. Giving up that job offer that pays great but is not for you? Awesome. Paused to take a U-turn on your career choices? Wonderful. Spent all the money you never had on things that you now realize you never need? Great. As you grow older, making these choices becomes harder or costlier or both. Only when you fail enough, you make sure you know that you’re giving your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming. Do not fall into the trap that you’re a person who is only successful all the time. If you are, then you’re not trying hard enough to see what you’re actually capable of. It’s simple : To test the strength of a rope, you need to pull it enough to see when it breaks. Once you understand what failure can do to you, you’ll undoubtedly fall in love with it. It’s hard to believe unless you experience it.
Here’s a modern day quote :
Don’t worry about failure. You only have to be right once — Drew Houston (Dropbox CEO)
5. Be curious.
You don’t have enough time in the world to learn everything by experimenting yourself. If you’re lucky, all you got is the time that Earth takes to rotate around the Sun for 80–100 times. Fortunately for us, we are living in an information revolution era, where you get answers to anything you want to know.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” — Steve Jobs during the Stanford commencement speech
This is the time for you to be curious, question every single thing, and make informed decisions. Eventually, you’ll get to a point where even decisions that you make out of intuition start to make statistical sense favoring odds of success without you realizing it.
As a tip, head on to Quora and start asking!
. 6. Perseverance is the key.
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.” — Steve Jobs
Over the course of years, you’ll meet a lot of people who start out seeking to realize their dreams. When a lot of those who you think are equally capable as you, drop off mid way, you start to not believe in yourself. Do not let that happen to you. Remember that it is always lonely at the top. Remember that very few people will be with you in your journey until the end. Remember that the people you think who are equally capable as you, are probably not. Remember that everyone has different choices and priorities.
“It’s impossible,” said pride. “It’s risky,” said experience. “It’s pointless,”said reason. “Give it a try,” whispered the heart. — Unknown
This is the time you want to listen to your heart.
7. Build your fort yourself.
Often times, you get lucky. Do not overuse luck, or that makes you lazy. It makes you believe in strengths you don’t yet have. It makes you think you deserve something even when you didn’t have to do anything. When you end up lucky, try to build the strengths you need to have to get to where you are if luck wasn’t with you. This will immensely help you in building the fort of success when you want to collapse it and build it all over again. In simple words, you can take an escalator to the top, but know how to climb the stairs.
“You can accomplish anything in the life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit” — Harry S. Truman
8. Surround yourself with great minds.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. — Eleanor Roosevelt
Discuss ideas with everyone around you. Unless it’s a patent-able invention, discuss ideas openly. Make it a habit to note everything that is troubling you and try to solve it. Don’t know how long you brushed your teeth? how about a toothbrush with a timer? Too much e-mail? how about ideas on organizing them? It’s a rookie mistake to think ideas can be stolen, because execution is what matters. Always remember : 1% is idea, 99% is execution.
If I have a dollar, and you have a dollar, and we both exchange, we will each have a dollar. If I have an idea, and you have an idea, and we both exchange, we will have two ideas. — Unknown
This is also the time for you to realize who will and won’t support you in the journey ahead of you. If you ever find the magical someone who you think is your soulmate and will support you no matter what, do whatever it takes to be with them for the rest of your life. I’m extremely glad I did.
9. Don’t forget to give.
While you’re having fun doing things that you love doing, do not forget to give. If you’re reading this on a PC/laptop sitting in an A/C room, or if you’re browsing this blog on one of those smartphones that just got released this year, you’re already way up on the Global Wealth Pyramid (head over to Page 24). Giving is your way of acknowledging that you’re here to serve a greater cause for the betterment of the people around you. If you’re interested on why I give, you can head over here to learn more. Giving money is not the only way you can give. You can give time (teach at a local school? take care of people?) as well.
Often times, success makes us arrogant. Giving or any sort of charity work reminds us of humility and how lucky we are to be where we are. It reminds us of how we can impact a huge part of the society that is not having the same level of access to opportunities that we have.
10. Take care of your health & your loved ones
Remember the part where at 29+1, I’m heading into the 2nd of 3 halves of my life. Well here’s more to it. Head over to here and check statistically how long you’re going to live. Chances are you’re already in the 2nd of 3 halves before you reach 29+1. If you’re one of the average Indians, like I am, you would be living another 43 years. That’s just another 29 + 1 + 13 years. Scary? Yes.
So, the 3 halves are not equal. Needless to say, you can put the statistics in the trash can, and live longer, by simply taking care of your most important asset — health. Exercise everyday, eat healthy, and believe in prevention than cure. The best thing you can do is to promise yourself to be more religious in following these from today on to try and make the 3 halves equal. As for your loved ones, remember that they are growing older with you as well. Take care of your family esp. parents, and teach them on eating right, exercising and staying healthy; not always do they know what they need to know.
Lastly,
I read this beautiful quote somewhere recently—
“Life is like a book. Some chapters sad, some happy and some exciting. But if you never turn the page, you will never know what the next chapter holds.” -Unknown
So keep turning the pages! All the best!
