Good morning everyone 🤗
Hope you all slept well.
I apologise to you all for the late arrival of the second part of the "Essential Life Lesson Everyone Should Learn Early on in Life"
So I will continue from where I stopped.
Less I forget I want to use this Moment to specially thank my sponsors @Greatwolfman @Mictorrani and also my great colleagues @FarmGirl @Oikawa @Pantera @King_Gozie @ThisisGrace21 @foryoubtc09 and to the ones I didn't mention, thank you all for your support and allowing me to have all this great moments here and experience.
Thank you.
***********************************11. You grow rich when you seek new experiences, not material things.
Material things break. They collect dust. They might even be forgotten over time. Experiences, however, live with you forever. When I look back, I remember the day I went on a mountain hike, the first time I moved to South Africa, the first time I received an appreciation for an article I wrote, the thrill of starting up my own business.
When I look back, I remember experiences, not things.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once wrote that “a mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” This is so true. Experiences stretch us because they push us out of our comfort zones and into our growth zone. And as we gather more experiences, we grow, curate memories, build relationships—we evolve, and thus, we grow richer in mind, body, and spirit.
12. The equation to financial wealth is quite simple: Learn how to manage your money, master a skillset that will make you valuable, and create more than you consume.
Mike Tyson earned approximately $300 million during the height of his boxing career, yet he lost all his money and was $23 million in debt when he filed for bankruptcy in 2003. Allen Iverson, once an NBA MVP, made a total of $154 million during his playing career, and almost went broke after retirement. Throughout my twenties, I was in debt three times.
What do all three of us have in common?
We never learned how to manage our money.
Look, everyone shares the motivation to make more money, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but what’s the point in acquiring more money if the sabotaging issue is with our inability to manage it?
The first step to financial wealth then is to fix our relationship with money and build better habits so we can better manage it. You build the foundational skills to manage a 5-figure income and they become transferable to a 7-figure income.
At the end of the day, money comes and goes. It arrives in the form of an income and it leaves in the form of expenses. Your income is what you earn from the work you produce and your expenses increase as you continue to consume. So, in a nutshell, the more you produce—or create—and the less you consume, the more wealth you will create.
But the question is, how can you create more money when you only have one source of income? How do you quadruple your production or creation?
Here’s the answer: You master a skillset that makes you valuable. You think like a craftsman and become one of the best at what you do. Why? Because that opens the door to more creation which opens the door to more income streams: You can now teach others what you know. You can now productize your knowledge and yourself.
The equation to financial wealth is quite simple:
Learn how to manage your money. Fix your relationship with money and build the foundational skills that will become transferable.
Master a skillset that will make you valuable. Think like a craftsman and become so valuable at a certain skillset that people will be so willing to pay and learn from you.
Create more than you consume. Cutting expenses saves you money, but creating more income streams makes you money. And how do you build more income streams? You create products that provide added value to the market. How? You leverage the skillset that you’ve mastered.
See how it all connects?
13. You’re a student of life, for life. Your sole objective, then, is to keep learning, evolving, and expanding your mind.
Thousands of years ago, Confucius wrote this word: “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” And yet—whether it’s rooted in our ego’s pride or low self-awareness—we continue to overestimate our abilities to achieve some things even though we clearly do not have the right skill set to attain them.
In psychology, this is referred to as the Dunning-Kruger Effect, a type of cognitive bias whereby people who are incompetent at something are unable to recognize their own incompetence. I learned this lesson exactly two years ago when I dove headfirst into the world of entrepreneurship thinking that I knew everything and it will be a walk in the park.
Newsflash: It wasn’t.
That’s when I adopted this new philosophy into my life: You are a student of life for life. I hope you adopt it too. If you do, then your sole objective becomes to keep learning, evolving, and expanding your mind. How? Read books and get busy doing: Explore new hobbies, seek new experiences, or master a skillset.
14. Fear is not there to stop you, it’s there to show you that you’re interested and you care. So befriend fear, don’t fight it, because once you do something that scares you, it becomes almost insignificantly small the second time around.
Once realize that fear is a feeling that arises only when you’re interested in something, your relationship with fear changes. You stop fighting it. Instead, you start leaning into it and befriending it—which puts you in the driver’s seat and in control of your destiny.
This is where one small mental shift can help you overcome the fear of taking action—the realization that if you take the first small step forward, everything else becomes easier because once you do something that scares you, it becomes almost insignificantly small the second time around.
Once you quit your job, it becomes easier to quit the second time around. Once you build your first business, the second becomes significantly easier. With time, the more wins with fear you can accumulate, the more fearless you will become.
15. You have to believe in yourself before anyone else does. That’s the cornerstone upon which real confidence is built.
Let’s get clear on this: Nothing in your life will change if you don’t take action toward creating the change that you want to see. And truth be told, you will most probably not bother to take action if you don’t believe in your ability to bring about that change in the first place. Part of this is due to the fact that your brain is designed to keep you tucked into your comfort zone but another part comes back to this: You don’t believe in yourself, and so you don’t bother to try and go after what you most deeply desire.
Since every action you take—or avoid—is rooted in a set of beliefs, the first step then is not to build the confidence to take action, but rather to change the belief itself. Look inside yourself, work from a place of identity, and re-write the script of the story that you repeatedly tell yourself:
I believe in my ability to figure things out as I go. I know that I can weather the storm when it hits. I know that I can adjust my sails when the wind blows. I am confident that I can find a way when the obstacles mount. I do believe that I’m capable of achieving what I set out to do.
Self-believe is the light that sparks your confidence. And it’s your self-belief that drives you to dive into new experiences that stretch beyond your comfort zone.
The way to genuine self-belief isn’t by boasting about what you’ve accomplished or talking about what you’re going to do. No. The way to real self-belief is to do the exact opposite: Stay quiet, and let your actions speak for themselves. Why? Because real confidence speaks in silent action.
On that note, here's how the confidence circle works.
16. Nature, laughter, kindness, love, and self-compassion—the best and most beautiful things in life are imperfect and free.
Sunsets. A swim in the sea. A walk in nature. Waking up to witness the sunrise over the mountains. A minute-long embrace. Laughter. Kindness. Love. Self-compassion. All these things are imperfectly beautiful and all of them are free.
The question I always ponder is why do we spend so much of our time, energy, and money seeking temporary pleasure in monetary material when we can find eternal meaning in the beauty that exists all around us?
You can find solace in nature.
You can find love in self-compassion.
You can find relief in laughter.
And you can find beauty in imperfection.
Nature, laughter, kindness, love, and self-compassion—these are the best and most beautiful things in life and they are totally free. They’re imperfect and that’s what makes them perfect. Nature calms you, laughter has the magic to revive you, and kindness and self-compassion weave a fabric of love into your world. And collectively, they heal wounds.
17. Failure and adversity are the greatest teachers—there’s a reason we can only see the light of the stars in the darkest of times.
I used to be ashamed to say that I failed. Now, I realize that it’s a blessing because failure gives you experience and teaches you how not to do things so that the next time you try, you’re more inclined to succeed. You have to fail first in order to succeed. Failure then is one step closer to success than not trying.
I used to be discouraged by adversity. Now, I embrace it because I know that obstacles are not there to keep us out but to give us a chance to build up the strength, character, and resilience to break them down.
Together, failure and adversity remind us that we must not be negatively affected by our own disappointments, rather, we must respond to them with the positive enthusiasm that would allow us the chance to thrive in spite of them.
So when you find yourself at a low, please remind yourself that it’s only in the darkness that we can see the stars in the sky. Similarly, it’s only in the darkest of times when the light can enter us. That’s why those who have been hurt the most have the greatest ability to heal.
And healing, as with everything else we can control in life, is a choice. We open the gateway to it once we learn how to become more grateful for our struggles, more appreciative of all the little blessings in life, and thus, a more beautiful being because of them.
18. Stay curious, question everything, and if you want something, ask for it. Live with such an attitude and you realize that when one door closes, another one always opens.
I’ve realized that as we grow older, we’re more inclined to listen to our inner critic; but I’ve also learned that the only way around this is to amplify the voice of our inner child. The ones who do are the ones who grow older but stay young in spirit. They’re the kind of people who see what they want—the opportunity, not the obstacle—and do one of two things: They either ask for it or go for it.
That’s because our curious inner child is what allows us to explore, ask questions, and create. It’s the engine of our wonder and imagination. And we all need to fiddle with a greater sense of wonder if we are to spark change in our life.
Truth is, the extent of how far you go in life is tied to three things: How curious you are, how often you question things, and how likely you are to take action.
When we reconnect with that inner child, we add a new robust layer of critical thinking. And it’s this curious attitude that will help you recognize that life is generous; when one door closes, another one opens—you just need to be resourceful enough to create it.
19. When you play the quick short-game you win small, but when you play the sequential long-game and allow yourself the time to grow, you win big. So be impatient with your actions, but be patient with your results.
The best things in life take time to grow.
Palm trees.
Relationships.
Thriving businesses.
The mastery of artistic pursuits.
This is one lesson that took me years and years to learn—that anything meaningful in life requires a long-term commitment. That’s when I stopped searching for shortcuts, slowed down, and rewired my thinking to only consider long-term pursuits.
The truth is, sacrifice, commitment, and hard work are foundational parts of the equation to get to where you want and reward is on the other side of it. There are no shortcuts or hacks. There is only dedicated, purposeful work that compounds and blossoms into something beautiful when the time is right.
To write a book, you must sit and write one page at a time. To cross the ocean, you must swim one stroke at a time. To summit a mountain, you must climb up one step at a time. To achieve anything great and reap the rewards, we must first toil in the language of labor—and we do so one small step at a time.
So here’s my advice: Be impatient with your actions, but be patient with your results. Focus on where you want to be in five years’ time, who you want to become, and take small steps every day that would move you in that direction; that’s how you create a positive domino effect in your life. And while you’re at it, give yourself the time to bloom into it—play the long-game, never the short one.
20. True mental strength is a game-changer. You build it by consciously focusing on what you can control (your inputs and outputs) and ignoring what you can’t control (your outcomes).
Life can be so difficult sometimes, but you already knew that.
What staying in bed unable to walk for two weeks taught me, and what being broke building a startup taught me, and what facing a pandemic taught me, was this: True mental strength is your ability to focus and refocus on what you can control and ignore everything else outside of it—that’s the only way you’ll maintain the enthusiasm to push onward.
How do you do that?
You focus on your inputs and outputs and you hold the belief that as you continue to put in the work, the outcome will work in your favor.
The life you experience is simply a reflection of your mindset: In any given situation in life, you can either dwell and complain about all the things that are bad (things that you can’t control) or you can shift your attention onto all that you can do (what you can control—your inputs and outputs). Little by little, day by day, as you consciously practice the latter, you will build resounding grit and mental strength.Â
Click here to read the first part https://read.cash/@Olawale4967/essential-life-lessons-everyone-should-learn-early-on-in-life-66c84feb
This article was specially and carefully written by @Olawale4967
The continuation of the third part would be next time.
Thanks for reading 🤗
Hope to see you next time.
Have a great weekend 🙂
