3 Things I've Learned

Alright, I wanted to write some long and insightful newsletter for my 30th birthday, but every time I got to writing it, I found myself forcing it. 

I have a new tradition, whenever someone turns a decade older, I take their age / # of decades and ask them the lessons they have learned that equal that amount. 

So using me as an example, I turned 30 today, so I would have 3 lessons to share. Funny enough, I have exactly three lessons to share. 

1. Always know why you are in the room.  

If you are anywhere doing anything, regardless of it is a good decision or a bad one, know why you are there. The advice that you will probably hear a lot is to control the things you can control, but I have found that it isn’t actually that practical of advice in the long term. Knowing that doesn’t change the way you feel in a moment, and there is not much in that idea that you can hold onto to help you recenter and refocus. 

Knowing why you are in a room is a quick reminder of why you chose to put yourself in a specific moment. Whether you are dealing with the backlash of previous decisions, or you are dealing with the moment in front of you. Knowing what brought you to that moment will help you recenter and retake control of the things you have control over.  

There is an important caveat. You are not going to be the main character in every “room” you find yourself in. That is okay, and is actually an even more helpful check when you are doing something for someone else. 

Here is an example, you are having a conversation with someone at a friend’s birthday party and it is really bothering you. You are not there to have that conversation, you are there to support your friend and in doing that the best way you can, you will have a conversation you may not want to have.

Understanding why you are in the situations you find yourself in is one of the fastest ways to remind yourself what truly matters. 

2. Choose your hard. 

My 20s contains a lot of moments of brute force and gumption and also a lot of moments of waywardness. What I have come to learn is that both scenarios have been hard. If I had to get up at 4:45am so that I could get to work and still have the chance to coach High School Track, or if I had no meetings on my calendar for weeks, both of those experiences required resilience in the face of a difficult obstacle. 

I think this one has become very mainstream in the past 5-10 years, and I by no means want to seem like its an original thought. I think the real lesson here isn’t for ourselves. The real lesson is how we approach other people as they try to navigate the trials in their lives. Just because a trial you have overcame is more outwardly difficult to overcome than someone else’s, it doesn’t mean that their experience is any less uncomfortable. 

We must approach ourselves and each other with grace. If you are mad at yourself for not approaching obstacles the same way you did in the past, or are irritated by how hard recent struggles have been remember this, all of the ages you have ever lived, live inside of you (Think of it like Russian Nesting Dolls). You are standing on the shoulders of your previous self to take on whatever pops up on your path. Adding labels to these things and determining their difficulty doesn’t help you more than knowing the task at hand.

When you find yourself comparing difficult situations, remember that its better to use that energy to figure out a path forward than to judge the severity. 

3. Sometimes things don’t have to be convenient 

One thing about me, I am an optimizer… but in the annoying way where I say “Bill Gates hires procrastinators because they will find the fastest way to get something done.” I really like doing what I want to do, and when I need to do something that I don’t want to do, I try to find the fastest way to get it done, so that I can be back doing what I want to do again.

During my 20s, that looked a lot more like Uber Eats for all my meals, than it looked like seamless systems for task completion. 

But what I learned through trying to optimize for convenience for the last 10 years was that just because something is inconvenient it doesn’t mean it is not valuable to me. There is a lot of value in overcoming those moments of frustration, or working through a complicated problem instead of taking the first answer that comes to mind. 

This last one is something I am still trying to learn and practice. So I am not sure if I have as beautiful of a bow to put onto it, but I think it still belongs on this list. 

Conclusion

I am sure that if you asked me this question tomorrow, I would have 3 different lessons for you. There are so many great things to learn and there are some great lessons my previous self has already experienced. 

So if you see me and want me to recite this word for word. Just know that is a room I will not be in for very long. 

bye bye 

Kyle