4 Life Lessons I Learned Too Late in Life...

IYKYK

There’s a huge problem with most lessons we learn in life.

The seem obvious.

Have you ever had the experience where you facepalm yourself because you’ve been sooooo fucking stupid for so long? I know I have. That’s a common reaction to having a massive learning moment in life.

The issue with most lessons is that we don’t know what we don’t know.

Something feels weird, overwhelming, difficult, frustrating… and then we start to learn.

Just one problem…

The best lessons in life come from our mistakes. Learning from these mistakes helps you achieve your goals. But, if you’re like me, you probably prefer not having to make every single mistake in existence, right?

So, let me share some of mine, so that you can take the lessons too!

Risk-Free “Growth” vs Growth

This was something that kept me stuck for years!

Back when I was being bullied, I got a dream! I told myself that I would become more successful than any of my bullies could even DREAM of. The only problems were that I had no skills and not a single clue as to how to achieve that dream.

So I started learning like a maniac.

This practice actually saved my life.

Because of the situation I was in, I felt depressed and have had thoughts about ending it…

This dream of success is what gave me a purpose, a reason to continue.

But, this focus on learning was also a mistake…

For a few years of my life, I was learning new things, but that was all I did… I felt good about myself because I thought that I was getting ahead. In reality, I wasn’t.

I confused learning with progress.

This is a common pitfall with personal development, it’s called “Productive Procrastination.” Watching a video that inspires you, making a plan, journalling about your goals and activities like that help you feel good. But at the end of the day, they don’t help you get ahead…

You make progress by doing the difficult work!

Your growth lies in the activities you’re procrastinating on.
It lies in pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone.
You get ahead when you work on your most important projects.
When you do those things that scare you the most.

Don’t fall victim to the trap of safe “growth” rather than actual growth!

Poker Vs. Roulette

Have you ever looked at someone and thought “Man, he sure got lucky!”

I know I have…

This mindset has hurt me because it prevented me from achieving my goals. I sold myself short because I credited others’ success to luck or circumstances. There were times when I gave up because I thought others had what it takes but I didn’t.

I credited their success to luck, them being special or some other gift.

Here’s what I learned since then:

Success in life is like poker, not like roulette.

The reason why “getting lucky” is a devious trap, is because luck definitely exists.

But, so does skill.

Imagine I’m going to the casino with a compulsive gambler. If we were to bet against each other for 1000 spins, there’s no telling who would win more. That’s because roulette is 100% based on luck.

Sidenote: Regardless of what you bet on, your expected returns are always the same 36/37th of what you put in. Some people win. But in the long run, only the house wins.

But, poker is different.

There is a factor of luck involved, but it’s mostly about skill.

Let’s say I’m walking into the casino with a professional poker player to play 1000 hands. In this scenario, the probability that I’m going to lose money is 99.9%. And I’m not even sure about the 0.1%…

Sure, I’m going to win some hands.

I’m going to get lucky at times.

But a professional player will make better choices. In some hands, he’d lose less than I would have with the same cards. In other situations, he’d win more than I would have. And some hands, I would lose whereas the professional might have won.

Real life is just like poker.

If you see people who have achieved things you haven’t, they either know something you don’t or are doing things you aren’t. If you accept this, you can learn from others! “Luck” is not a learnable skill.

That said, if you want to get luckier:

 Work harder, work more and work for a longer period of time.

Continued effort creates luck!

The Correct Timeline for Success

This one’s gonna hurt some special snowflakes.

If you want to achieve extraordinary success, start thinking in terms of years and decades. Be the person that can go the distance. In a world where most people think in terms of weeks or (maybe) months, be the exception who’s willing to be patient.

This mistake cost me dearly too…

Back when I was about 18 or 19, I got into an online business for myself. This was a steep learning curve to say the least. At some point, I was finally getting some traction. There wasn’t any revenue yet, but I was reaching more people every week.

And… then I quit.

Because I had the wrong expectations, I gave up.

After putting in about 9 months of (inconsistent) work, I came to the “conclusion” that it just wasn’t going to work out for me. The ironic part is that, in hindsight, I realized that I was on the right track!

Except, I would have needed to work at it for 2 years, rather than 9 months.

Knowing what I know now, I’m 99% sure it would have been successful if only I had continued for another year or so. Besides the wasted time and effort, this business left me about 5k in debt too.

But it did teach me the following:

As long as you’re directionally right, keep going and don’t stop!

What I mean by directionally right is that you’re ALWAYS going to make mistakes along the way. When we mess up, we simply need to adjust. As long as the overall strategy is sound, you’re going to be fine as long as you keep learning from mistakes.

The Energy You Give Is the Energy You Get

If you’re an introvert, this one’s for you.

After being bullied for years, I can say that my confidence, self esteem and social skills were pretty much nonexistent. Over the years, I had to teach myself how to make friends, how to make a good (first) impression and even how to talk to others like a normal person.

I was never great with people….

… but dogs loved me!

Wanna know why?

When I would walk past a stranger on the street, I looked like I was dead inside. I had an icy cold kind of stare and my body language basically communicated “Ugh, another person…”.

I wonder why people weren’t keen to talk to me…

But with dogs, my reaction was completely different!

Even from a distance, I would get excited about seeing a furry friend! My face went into a smile, I would look at the dog with excitement and every fiber of my being screamed “OMG doggo!”.

And they were like “OMG, Maikel!”.

At some point the lesson just hit me.

Since then, I’ve tried to push myself out of my comfort zone. One of the things I started doing was minding my energy. I made it a thing to go into social interactions with more energy.

I tried to portray the feeling that I was happy to see them and talk to them.

Almost immediately, my interactions improved!

When I put in the energy to talk to people and to be more interested, they become more interested in talking to me too. It certainly was uncomfortable at first, but the more I started pushing my boundaries, the better I got at it.

If you’re an introvert, try this out yourself.

If you’re an extrovert, you’re probably doing this already. But if not, this is your reminder.

The REAL Solutions to Life’s Problems

If you understand the problem, you’re 80% done with solving it!

The issue is that most people lack the understanding to find (and understand) the REAL problems. Oftentimes people are trying to solve symptoms rather than the problems.

Are you?

Listen to today’s audio lesson here:

Improve All 4 Levels of Focus

If you want to be more productive it’s important to focus on…. SQUIRREL!!

Right… ehm… focus is important.

But focus is about much more than just keeping your head down to concentrate on 1 thing. In fact, there are 3 other levels of focus that are even more important!

Watch this video to learn about improving all 4 levels:

The Synergy of Skills

Let’s talk about poker for a bit.

In order to be a good poker player, you need to have a variety of skills. Calculating odds, hiding your emotions, reading other people, patience, strategic thinking and bluffing are ones that come to mind.

Success in life is the same.

In this issue of the newsletter, I talked about The Synergy of Skills.

This is the concept that you’re often 1 skill away from drastically improving your life. I shared the example of a friend who’s an engineer. Most of his colleagues were the cliche engineering nerd type of people, but he is a social butterfly.

He wasn’t the best engineer, but HE got the promotion over his coworkers.

In this example:

Engineer + Social Skills = Promotion.

Remember the saying:

“Jack of all trades, master of none. But generally better than the master of one.”

What this means is that it’s oftentimes better to focus on learning another skill that synergizes with the ones you already have. If you’re great at sales, you might learn about leadership to become a manager or start your own company (if that’s your ambition).

That will often be a better use of your time than going from an 8 to an 8.5 at sales.

The Exercise for Today

I’m going to sound like a cliche job interview for a bit:

“Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”

Rather than giving me some socially acceptable answer, I would like for you to get out a pen and a piece of paper. Give yourself the honest answer. Deeply think about this and allow yourself to dream bigger!

Write it down in as much detail as you can think of.

Underneath, ask yourself the following:

• What skills would I need to achieve [goal]?

• What skills do I already have?

• What skills do I still need to learn?

• What skill should I start learning first?

With the last question, you can think about it in two ways:

Firstly, you could ask yourself which skill would be the quickest to learn and get great at. The sooner you can master a new skill, the quicker you can get ahead and get to learning the next big thing.

The other train of thought is about momentum.

Out of the skills you listed, some could make an immediate impact in your life while others would take some time. In these cases, it would often be better to start with the one giving BOTH immediate and long term results (rather than just the latter).

Congratulations!

You’ve just identified what you can replace those 3 daily hours of Netflix with!