Advice To Self: Slow The F*** Down
What Mama never taught me
I want to write a new series of short articles about advice.
No, no, I’m not going into the counseling business.
Rather, I’m going to share with you some of the things I tell myself.
Sometimes these are things I’m telling myself now, or…
In this first case, a thing I would tell myself if I could go back in time and tell my teenage or 20-something self.
So here’s my first piece of Advice To Self:
SLOW THE F*** DOWN.
I was — and am — always in a freaking hurry. As long as I can remember, in most things, I was always so rushed that I didn’t take the time to really focus on what I was doing at that moment. I’m sure I missed — and still do miss — lots of learning experiences.
For smaller things, I suppose it’s pretty common to want to get unpleasant or not-so-fun things out of the way so you could move on to something you really wanted to do. I mean, I can’t really fault my younger self for wanting to rush through that week’s biology chapter. (Okay, okay, I’m not a science guy.)
But on bigger things, I look back and ask myself, Self, what in the world were you thinking?
I love all things learning and education, yet I rushed my earliest experiences. In hindsight, my college years were some of the best years of my life. Yet, I zoomed through college, taking extra courses during the regular semesters and adding even more during summers, so that I finished in about three years. Well, not having anything really to do then — what was the rush? — I went to graduate school and got a Master’s degree. Of course, I rushed through that too — with what point, I really don’t know — and finished a normal two-to-three year program in 18 months.
So, I guess it was no wonder that a few years later when I got an MBA I chose a university that offered an accelerated path with two intense summers and a full academic year instead of the more traditional two-year programs.
I loved, loved, loved every single one of those degree programs. Yet, I was always anxious to get to some to-be-defined future.
I suppose I can blame this on my upbringing; my mom was like that. I remember one time when, at age 13, she’d taken me and little sis to South America to visit the family of a kid who’d been an exchange student with us the year before.
On the way back, she wanted to visit every single Central American country.
And, we did. One day each. We started from the south, Panama, and worked our way north. Arrived at the capital city, went immediately to the airline’s ticket office to confirm the next day’s flights, walked around the town a little, had something to eat, then to our hotel for an early night and early-morning departure to the next country.
It was a great experience, but holy-freakin’-schmoly, what was the rush Mama?
Advice To Self: Slow The F*** Down.
Michael Werner is a publisher, writer, and ponderer. In a prior life, he ran a 1 Million+ member online community and publishing company. He lives in Florida but travels as much as he can get away with. He wants to live three other lives simultaneously, as a retired diplomat and spy novelist in Santa Fe, New Mexico, as a painter in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and as a raconteur somewhere in Tuscany. You can find him at Mindtrekker and Twitter.
