44 Lessons Learned Along the Way
Issue #0010 October 18th, 2019
“Life is an unfoldment, not an accretion.” ~ Charles Haanel
Welcome to my 44th Birthday letter of reflection shared publicly for hopefully your enjoyment, and for my own rear-view mirror at some point in the future of my level of consciousness at this time. At this point in my life (which I hope has another 50 solid years left) I know a few things to be true. First, I am driven by new opportunities and grounded by my experiences. Secondly, I know that hard work defines me, character separates me, and love will be my legacy. In that spirit, I lovingly share these lessons and hope that some of them help you in a meaningful way to live a wealthier existence.
44 years and 44 lessons learned along the way:
#1 To err is human…and we are all human.
#2 To forgive is to act with divinity and humbly recognize our shared humanity.
#3 To forget is unwise (and unnecessary) lest we wish to repeat the lesson.
#4 Sometimes we must lose ourselves in others to find out who we truly are.
#5 Money is meant to be our servant not our master
#6 Character is who we are when we think nobody is watching.
#7 People don’t resist change, but every one of us resists being changed.
#8 We are best to question our own assumptions frequently unless we wish the market to expose the weakness in them for us at a pretty cost.
#9 The future today belongs to the insatiable learner while the learned are wonderfully equipped to succeed in a world that no longer exists.
#10 My top 12 books (that I didn’t write) for every business person to read, immediately if not sooner this year, include (in no specific order): The Watchman’s Rattle, The Everything Bubble, The Master Key System, The Science of Getting Rich, The Creature from Jekyll Island, Connectography, The Four Agreements, Greater than Yourself, The 100 Year Marathon, The Fourth Turning, Man’s Search for Meaning.
#11 The shortlist of thought leaders I recommend you follow and who I know personally and consider influences, friends, and mentors are Gerd Leonhard, Mickey McManus, Rebecca Costa, G. Edward Griffin, Neil Howe, Raoul Pal, Steve Farber, Parag Khanna, Yael Eisenstat, Brittany Kaiser, and Bob Proctor.
#12 The greatest teacher in my life is our son because he reminds me how far I have come and shows me how far I need to still go in my unfoldment as a man, father, husband, and member of society.
#13 The joy of life is in the doing.
#14 Setting goals is an intellectual exercise and achieving those goals is a lawful one.
#15 You and I can never outperform our current self-image sustainably.
#16 Humans were built at a cellular level to grow against resistance. Adversity serves us in the long run.
#17 What we give energy to will grow. Focus is the application of our mental muscle known as willpower.
#18 Bandwidth will always be a constraint
#19 Health (mental and physical) must be a priority for financial production/output to increase.
#20 Time is the ultimate asset because we all have an equal amount each day, none of us knows how many days we will get, and successful people honor time’s scarcity more than unsuccessful people.
#21 Attention and Trust are the most valuable currencies. Both take years to accumulate and can be lost in seconds from one bad move or association.
#22 Love is a verb, not a noun. (Thanks Chet Snook for teaching me that one long ago).
#23 When faced with tough decisions in personal or professional relationships ask “What would love do?”
#24 We all answer to somebody, and yet we must remember that we answer to ourselves first and last.
#25 Regret is poison.
#26 Life can be hard at times. It fairly treats us all unfairly and we are always living just on the other side of a crisis, heading into a crisis, or in the middle of a crisis.
#27 Empathy is something to cultivate if you want to be remembered well by others.
#28 No matter how much we achieve or don’t achieve in this life, the world will keep spinning the second we are gone.
#29 The paradox and beauty of life are that we are all insignificant and meaningless in the grand scheme of things, and yet we get to experience and make meaning out of everything we choose to each and every day. It gives us this unique ride of ‘richness’ through emotional highs and lows and then it ends.
#30 Building and maintaining material net worth is far easier to achieve than rich and long-lasting personal relationships. Achieving both in your lifetime is the holy grail of human achievement.
#31 You (and I) are never as great as “they” say, and never as bad as “they” say either. Stay humble and true to yourself.
#32 “Envy is the worst of all sins because its the only one that you can’t have any fun at.” ~Charlie Munger
#33 We are all spiritual beings having a human experience. We are energy moving into form, through form, and eventually back out of form. We are all connected.
#34 We are each the sum total of our dominant thoughts, that form our feelings, and dictate our actions.
#35 We are all born with far more potential than we will ever manifest in one single lifetime, but our internal desires are our conscious recognition of what our spirit wants to unfold in this lifetime.
#36 Abundance is our shared birthright, but scarcity is our shared tool of manipulation. Zero-sum games are part of the design, but you don’t have to choose to play them exclusively.
#37 Practice makes permanent (not perfect) because we can practice imperfect things and become masterful at imperfect actions.
#38 Thoughts are the highest form of source energy. Thoughts are things. Thanks, Napoleon Hill.
#39 Money and success are the ultimate magnifying glass. They can only make you more of who you already are. Money is not the root of all evil or good. It merely magnifies.
#40 Poverty is a disease of the mind, not a financial outcome. You can feel poor with or without money.
#41 Cash flow is the oxygen of any business. No good idea, business, or entrepreneur can operate without organizational oxygen.
#42 You will achieve more in the next 10 years than you ever could have imagined today if you put in the daily incremental effort, but you will likely (always) feel behind where you should be.
#43 The real risk is doing nothing. I will keep finding joy in the doing. I wish you joy as well.
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