10 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Was Younger
As you get older, the days go by more slowly but the years much more quickly.
Youth is wasted on the young, so they say. Which, if true (and for almost all of us it is, to a varying degree) it is also oxymoronically true by very definition. You can’t know it until you are older. So why even write this blog? The best reason I can think of is because there’s going to be a time, 30 years from now, when we all wonder what we could have learned or what we DID learn thirty years ago. This, then, is what I have learned in the last 30 years. I hope some resonates with you — and I hope we are both revisiting 30 years from now.
Life is fleeting and precious. By your mid-life you will know too many people that have passed away far too early. People with enormous energy and spark — who could have done so much more with more time. You would do anything for just a day more with the, but that will be impossible. Tell people how you feel about them while you can. Any one of us could be gone tomorrow.
You will also start to see what I think is is one of the great paradox’s of life. As you get older, the days go by more slowly but the years much more quickly. There’s more time, perceptually, to seize each day — but less to seize the year. Carpe diem the hell out of the day. We only pass this way once.
Everyone has trauma. That doesn’t mean everyone has the same trauma. There are capital “T’s” (a friend of mine lost her 6 year old son to a rare brain disorder while in her arms) and there are lower case t’s (perhaps you were bullied as a child). And literally every possible thing in between. But those traumas, many of which we experience as children, we develop adaptive mechanisms to cope with them. That protects us as children, but if we don’t look inward and hug our demons of the past, they can become incredibly devastating as adults. So much of the need to self medicate; alcohol, drugs, workaholism, etc. ad infinitum comes from the need to escape our inner pains that we have not turned around to face squarely in the eye. Be gentle on yourself. The trauma never was your fault. Be kind to others. Because every single person on this planet is fighting their own personal battle.
Your circle of friends will shrink. No, you won’t get less cool or fun. In fact, you very well may be more charming. But you will add on layer after layer of responsibility in each decade of life. And because of this, you have to really prioritize. Friends, of course, will and should be high on the list. But you start slowly to learn to hang on to the ones you trust and have deep bonds with and to drift away from those you don’t. It’s incremental. I feel like I woke up in my 40’s and said “where did all my friends go?” But the close ones who were still around, they will be there for life. They will add depth, humor and support when you need them most. You won’t need 50 of these. Just embrace the ones you have and tell them how much you care.
You will derive meaning and happiness from completely different things. That’s just growth — in fact I think this change is great. Would hitting a home run over a little league ballpark fence always want to be just as dopamine rewarding? That was younger me — performance was always the happiness hit for me. Now, I cherish connectivity with others. I cherish learning. I am very much am addicted to self-growth and introspection. None of these things mattered to me when I was younger. They aren’t better than skiing out of bounds, or scoring a game winning touchdown. They are just different. And I like that.
It highly likely isn’t as big of a deal as it seems. Not getting into the college of your dreams (how can you know it is and the next one isn’t, for what it is worth, if you’ve never attended either?), the car breaking down, someone casting a false accusation at you, someone ignoring you. I could go on. These things all used to bother me, and none do now. You’ll have days when there are real emergencies. You’ll be in a real crisis where people look to you to get out of it. Save your energy for then.
Now is the best time ever to learn. It’s better now than it was 20 years ago, and it’ll be better 20 years from now. “What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean” said Isaac Newton. But what he couldn’t have known when he said that is the sheer amount of knowledge — an means of delivering it — we have at our discretion now. Use it! Remember, there is no difference between those who don’t know how to read and those who don’t read.
The older you get, the less exciting many things will be. That’s okay! Just be ready for it. There isn’t the same magical excitement of new things — because much less will seem new. That’s change. As I alluded to before, you’ll likely be a hell of a to more calm for the same reason. And when something is magically exciting, you do tend to hold on to it a bit longer. You’ll realize how precious that is.
Arrogance masks insecurity. Sadly, this doesn’t go away for so many, in fact it gets worse often. The field of psychology has devoted a ton of work into helping people come up from the one down position. They have not done the same for those who need to come down from the one up position, who mask their insecurities by acting superior. That ruins interpersonal relationships more than any other. I had the great fortune to interview world-renown therapist Terry Real on just this, give it a listen if you know someone in your life who does this to you.
Your metabolism doesn’t slow down, but you do. The science here has changed dramatically, but it turns out our natural metabolisms only decreases an infinitesimal fraction as we age. What goes down? Often our drive. And always our ability to return to homeostasis as quickly. You can still be fit and healthy — but what you can’t do is be fit and healthy by pushing yourself to the limit every day. I learned this the hard way by running on a stress-fractured foot for a year. Now I intentionally take it slow when I hike or lift. The results are just about the same if I am consistent and mindful.
Always take action. Ending on a similar theme a I began, when I think to do something I now get up and do it. If not, that time will be gone. Over with forever. That doesn’t mean I just “go go go” all day long. I also lay on the coach and meditate and reflect every day. But I almost never regret the things I do. Only the things I think to do, but never attempt. As Emerson once opined “All life is an experiment, the more experiments, the better.”
“The only time you should ever look back is to see how far you’ve come” I think that is partially true. Look back to see how much you have grown, like I did this morning to write this. But also to see how much you will still grow. And cherish the memories of the past — I’ve come to embrace many of my failures. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them. Nor too, would you.
We are our own griefs. We are our own happinesses. We are our own remedies.