12 Important Rules of Life You Must Know Before Turning 30
After working for nearly 3 years in the industry, I decided to take a leap of faith to leave my job and start my study life in a foreign country. It took a lot of consideration and tête-à-tête with friends and family before I made the decision to start a completely new journey.
I still remember vividly that I was still doubtful of my decision even I already set foot in the airport. Now I can proudly say that it was the wisest decision I ever made. Of course, everyone must do their due diligence. These are the rules of life I truly believe every single person can achieve success in life once understand the gist.
The 12 Important Rules of Life to Road of Success
1. Invest heavily in yourself because that is the only way you can increase your personal growth. Investing in yourself is the most profitable investment. You can view it as a personal investment. Remember you are your own best asset.
Start investing when you are still young and never stops investing. Investment can be all sorts of assets. You can invest in stock, bonds, REITs, real estate, gold, or even cryptocurrencies.
But all in all, investing in yourself is the most profitable investment you can ever make in your life and has the best ROI. It can bring you not only immediate pay-off, but also unlock your potential to create recurring values in your life. No one can take that away from you.
2. See yourself as a brand that deserves a very good reputation, you want to earn some respect the same way people respect Tesla. The rule is to strictly mind your own business and don’t get involved in what doesn’t concern you!
3. Even though you are from a wealthy home, that is still not enough to carry on in life. Strive for your own personal independence. It’s very important.
Be smart in capital allocation. Allocate your capital and split it into 4 buckets — emergency fund, investment, essentials expenses, and also leisure expense.
Emergency fund — rule of thumb is to stash away at least 6 months’ worth of living expenses. In order to determine the amount, record how much you spend in a month on the things that you must spend, and multiply the amount by 6. This free cash flow will rescue you from the critical financial hardship you might have faced. For instance, some people lost their job during the COVID-19 situation in the year 2020.
Investment — set aside 20% (or more, depending on your allocation) monthly and invest in stocks, or bonds. Let the compounding interest works for you. Most people have been mistaken the term investment with trading. Trading can be stock trading, options trading. Examples of option trading strategies like cash-secured puts, covered calls, credit spread can generate consistent income.
Essential expenses — anything that you must spend or pay, e.g. food, water bill, electricity bill, mortgage loan.
Leisure expenses — you can spend them on vacations and travels, magazine subscription, gym subscription, movie streaming subscription and etc.
4. Take care of your own health, It is very important because health is wealth.
Start a healthy diet, adopt a workout regimen, exercise regularly. Cut down the time spent being sedentary. Weight creates nasty issues, a sedentary lifestyle has obvious health risks like diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, and heart disease. The heavier your weight is, the harder your heart has to work. Not to forget, get better sleep and drink more water. Keep your body fresh and hydrated.
5. Education is a very good investment but don’t let your life depend on it, try to acquire more skills like social skills, communication skills, interpersonal skills, etc.
Interpersonal skill is an extremely vital aspect of life. Blend around with people of various backgrounds, grow your social network. It improves the interdepartmental communication breakdowns.
Talk to people, find a mentor. Talk with a lot of people from different backgrounds and ideologies. The more you expose yourself to different sets of thinking, the more you get to understand the world around you. Often people live in what we called “ideological bubbles”. If you hang out with people who are very similar to you, they live near you, they consume the same content as you, they think the same way you do, you are creating an echo chamber where your idea get redirected back to you.
6. Never reveal your next move to anybody. Yeah, so many people see themselves to be in a race with their fellow men. Act more, talk less.
Don’t get me wrong, I know it sounds contradictory with Rule #5. I like people gathering around to help to share the goodness and living a positive life.
There is a saying “You are all bark and no bite” — you may become that sort of person when you share your goals in a public fashion. You may end up becoming more committed to pleasing your customers or audience, rather than delivering the actual outcome.
Besides, you will lose your sense of self once you reveal your plan in public for every step you take or what you might be doing. From the perspective of the business model, you become vulnerable and predictable. You don’t want to be predictable.
7. The 80/20 principle is real. If 80% of crimes are only committed by 20% of the population, then don’t pretend as if you are busy when you are probably just working according to Parkinson law. Be very productive in life.
8. At the end of each year, evaluate your friends. Stay away from the ones that wasted your time or spend less time with them. Spend more time with those that value you.
Humans are social and rely on other humans to maintain their emotional, mental, and physical health. Limit all the time spending with toxic friends that are full of pessimistic, self-centered, the perspective discrepancy in interests or belief.
Your friends and network are your own professional safety net. Your net worth is directly correlated to your network. The higher the quality of your connection, the wealthier you are in life. Invest in quality friendship. Keeping friendship alive requires work. If your friendship has faded away, it is because none of the parties makes it a priority to invest in the relationship.
9. Draw your own personal mission statement and pursue it diligently. It's the main definition of your personal existence.
10. Before making any decision, engage your mental effort, evaluate and analyze carefully.
11. Avoid short-term goals, always pursue long-term goals. The main reason why people lose track of their goals is that they could only formulate but lack further tools to implement and control. Get serious.
Many people only focus on short-term goals. Set a long-term goal that you want to achieve in the future. Here comes the important part that most people ignore when it comes to goal setting: divide your long-term goal into systematic checkpoints.
It helps your long-term goal less intimidating and much more attainable. It is crucial to stay consistent with the process throughout the checkpoints. At the end of every week/month/quarter, visit and review your checkpoints to keep you on track. This simple implementation prepares you for a motivated and productive day.
12. Accept the fact that you know nothing and you want to know a lot. It helps a lot!
Last but not least, be humble and take advice from anyone. Admitting you not knowing everything opens you up to the ability to learn more. So when you find yourself in circumstances where you feel you know nothing, then buckle up, and ask for help or guidance from somebody. Otherwise, take the initiative to self-learn with the help of Google, Youtube, or some online platforms.
Remember, “the past is gone, and the future is unknown, and all we have right now is this present moment”. Therefore, make a change and step out of your comfort zone if you have not.
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