If You’re 30 And Don’t Know This, You’re In Trouble
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Good advice usually appears out of nowhere.
When you least expect it.
You'll be in a meeting at work when a mentor leans in and says something that sticks.
You'll be home relaxing when a friend tells you a story with a lesson that sticks.
It might not stick at first but sooner or later it clicks.
Then…
You start to see how the lesson applies to many different parts of your life.
Some people are good at taking in new advice.
Others are not.
It comes down to how quickly you learn from mistakes.
If you hear advice and recognize that you've failed to apply it in the past, you're in a great position to benefit from it moving forward.
If you hear advice and hide from the fact that you've failed to apply it in the past, you're in trouble.
Never Refuse To Learn From Mistakes
A report in Wired Magazine shows that the brain reacts to mistakes in two steps.
Both of these reactions can be measured using electroencephalography (EEG).
The first reaction is involuntary and occurs about 50 milliseconds after making a mistake.
The second reaction occurs 100-500 milliseconds after making a mistake—as you become aware of it.
People who learn fast are those who have a strong first reaction followed by a strong second reaction.
In other words…
People who recognize errors in their past thinking and decide to do something about it afterwards are fast learners.
A study in Psychological Science confirmed this by concluding that people who think their intelligence is malleable (as opposed to fixed) learn faster.
They also learn better.
Here's how you can too…
First, recognize when good advice can improve your life.
Second, apply good advice to your life as soon as you hear it.
The faster you apply useful information to your life, the more successful you'll be.
10 Things Every 30 Year Old Should Know
If you're 30 or older, there are some key things you should have learned by now.
If you haven't learned these things yet, don't worry.
It's not too late.
You can still learn this advice and apply it.
Here are 10 pieces of advice every 30 year old should know…
1. Other people have good ideas too.
Everyone has good ideas.
Most people know this.
The problem is that most people see their ideas as being in competition with other people's ideas.
The truth is other people's ideas can help your ideas.
Or…
Their ideas can replace your ideas to help you get to where you want to go faster.
Stop ramming your ideas down other people's ears.
Start listening to what other people have to say too.
Be willing to explore their ideas.
Not just your own.
2. No one plays a villain in their own lives.
No one is the bad guy from their own point of view.
They're the good guy.
They're the hero.
You're the bad guy.
Anytime you spend trying to hold a mirror up to someone else to show them they're wrong is a complete waste of time.
Why bother?
You're never going to prove to them that they're wrong.
Sure, they might agree with you to shut you up.
But that's just lip service.
Quit spending hours arguing with your negative colleagues in hopes of getting some confession about how they're wrong and you're right.
It's never going to happen.
3. It’s better to have 100 friends than 100 dollars.
It's easy to think that money is the answer to your problems.
It's not.
People are the answer.
Not in the cornball, ‘let's hold hands and sing a song’ kind of way.
In the productive, ‘let's get things done’ kind of way.
You need people to accomplish big goals.
People, not money.
Why do some businesspeople go bankrupt and get back on top again within months?
Their network.
The bank can't take away your network.
This is why…
Your network is your net worth.
4. Everyone overestimates what they can do in a short amount of time but underestimates what they can do in a long amount of time.
Breakthroughs don't happen in one explosive moment.
They happen over time.
By small, repeated efforts.
It's like breaking open a rock.
Before drills, dynamite, and high pressure water jets, rocks were broken open by hand.
The process very boring.
Someone would hit the rock over and over again with a hammer.
Nothing would happen for a long time.
But they'd keep swinging.
10 times.
50 times.
500 times.
Then on the 500th or 5000th time, the rock would split in half.
It would crumble.
Like magic.
But it wasn't magic; it was science.
Even though it looked like nothing was happening on the outside, each hit by the hammer was reducing the rock’s internal integrity.
The rock was getting weaker. You just couldn't see it.
This is how all breakthroughs happen.
No matter what your goal is, there are going to be some things you can control and some things you can't control.
There are going to be things you can see happening and things you can't see happening.
Don't forget the things you can't see.
Don't forget the things working in your favor that are going on in the background.
No matter what you can see, keep swinging.
5. Sit back and let your competitors expose themselves.
You don't always have to attack.
You don't always have to make the next move.
Sometimes doing nothing is the best offense.
Sun Tzu once said…
"If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will come floating by."
Stop always reacting to what your competitors do.
Instead…
Take a seat and let them expose themselves.
Let them overextend themselves.
They might just fail all on their own.
6. Salespeople make businesses successful.
It's easy to have no respect for salespeople.
Until you've had to sell something.
Most people grow up getting taught by the media and academia that selling is bad.
It's slimy, shifty, and shady.
This isn't true.
Selling is the best thing that ever happened to the world.
Without selling, nothing around you would exist.
Without selling, all businesses would die.
Progress would die.
Trading value is the cornerstone of all human growth.
Guess what…
No matter who you are, you're in sales.
You're either selling yourself or selling something else to survive.
There are no exceptions to this rule.
7. No profit is like a cancer. No cash flow is like a heart attack.
If your business is not making any profits for one reason or another, it will eventually kill your business.
But not right away.
You can treat low or no profits by changing your margins, launching new projects or products, or by doing a thousand other things.
But, if your cash flow stops…
If you stop bringing in money altogether…
Your business dies on the spot.
No treatment.
No hope.
Dead on arrival.
Pay attention to the money coming in and the money going out.
Keep the engine turning.
Stay liquid.
Focus on what really matters.
8. Surround yourself with people who challenge you.
Finding yes-men and yes-women to follow you around and tell you how great you are is easy.
There are plenty of brainless people in the world who will follow you blindly.
But…
What's the value in that?
You can't grow without hearing the word no from time to time.
You can't grow without being challenged.
Very often, the best people for you are those who frustrate you the most.
The only way to create productive relationships with these people is to change yourself—to change the way you see these difficult people.
Learn to enjoy the way difficult, yet positive people challenge you.
Learn to enjoy the discomfort.
Surround yourself with solution-minded people who aren't afraid to tell you how it is when you ask.
9. You can always control how you handle a situation.
Bad things happen for no reason.
Bad people do bad things.
These things are not your fault.
But how you handle them is.
Life is not what happens to you, it’s how you handle what happens to you.
You're always in control of your attention and your attitude.
Things might be falling apart in your career or business on the outside, but on the inside, you can stay calm.
You can choose to be at peace.
You can choose to be happy.
You can also choose what to focus on.
No matter what's going on around you, choose to focus on solutions, not problems.
Focus on what you can fix, change, leverage, spin, and learn from.
Don't focus on the unfixable.
Let it go.
Move on.
10. If somebody doesn’t like you just the way you are, show them the door.
Stop changing yourself just to fit in with others.
Fitting in is often one of the worst things you can do for your career.
You will never rise above middle manager by fitting in.
You will never climb to the top of the ladder by becoming another rung in the ladder.
This is something you have to acknowledge and work against every single day.
Every. Day.
The best strategy for standing out is to be okay with other people not liking you.
Quit wasting your time and energy trying to please everyone.
Quit focusing on the one or two people in the office who don't like you, and start focusing on the dozens of others who do like you.
Focus on the other 7 billion people on the planet who could like you too.
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/youre-30-dont-know-trouble-dr-isaiah-hankel