Things I Wish I Knew Sooner on Living Authentically

I used to hear “live life with no regrets” as a mantra much more than I do now, which is a good thing. There are so many things I wish I knew sooner. I don’t know these people who live life with no regrets unless they really just don’t give a shit about anyone or are otherwise some sort of psychopathic mind set in the making. Winston Churchill is attributed with saying “You have enemy’s? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something in your life.” A nuance to this idea is “Have you ever stood up for something you really believed in; only to see it become a huge disappointment to the point you regret having stood up for it?” That is some 21st century nihilist sentiment right there!

Live long enough and you get to see many things that were; come to not be. Even core values and beliefs can evolve with time as they should. There are multiple things I wish I knew sooner that could have helped me understand this better. Good and Bad are timeless ideas that we can show our children without fear of taxing our own neurons too much, but once you get into the nitty gritty you can find grey everywhere. If our beliefs and values did not change with time, we would have little more free-will than an amoeba. This is a feature in the system not a bug!

Now I need to pull this back in because I really wanted to discuss lessons, I have learned that I regret not learning sooner. However, this is a bit of a BS starting point because learning the lesson is the only way to grow. You only grow through discomfort and effort! Not all is lost though I do have the one thing I want to scream from the roof tops to todays young adults. There are many things I wish I knew sooner and this is one of them.

Man, I miss being a young adult, but the whole time I was one I wanted to be older so what are you going to do? I am going to tell you what I wish I was doing, with the benefit of hindsight (my superpower)! Find what you enjoy and are good at, find a way to monetize it (just because that is the current socio-economic construct with which we can measure how much a society is saying our value is worth. Nothing has been more true than the therapist at a rehab I went to telling me that part of him resents having to get up and go to work every day! Me too buddy, me too!)

Anyway, so now you know what you want to do, or at least a field maybe! Now NETWORK! NETWORK! NETWORK! Find people that are doing kind of work you want to do and make friends. Work with them in that field. If you want to be an artist make art! Just do it make stuff. There are things I wish I knew sooner about networking! Even if it sucks make it and the next time you will do better. Keep going!

A lot of innovation is hampered by self-doubt. Stop censoring yourself and just be! Remember never to look in your neighbor’s bowl unless it is to make sure they have enough to eat. But when that neighbor is laughing at your bowl maybe you should peak and see what is doing. You might find the people laughing at you are covering for their own inadequacies. Maybe they have never made anything because they are too busy laughing at everything! Another important thought I had in rehab was “If you are tired of being a joke stop being a clown!” but that one was mean to clowns, so I don’t go around saying it now.

Well, I think that is enough damage for one day, thank you for riding with me!