Someone asked me this week what advice I would give myself 50 years ago (I’m over 50). After a bit of ruminating, pensive deliberation, and thought ping-pong, here’s what I would tell the 12-year-old version of Joe in 1974:
1. Figure out who you are. It takes a while; but if you work at it, you will. Once you know who you are, be that person and no one else.
2. Learn to forgive your enemies.
3. One day you will pick a partner for love and life. Love that person more than yourself. Some days you’ll need to refer to #2 above.
4. Make peace with your parents. One day it will be too late.
5. Compound interest will be vital to creating your future wealth.
6. You will work most of your life. Pick work that will make you enough money, but also pick work that is in service to others. It will make you happy, and sometimes that’s the best paycheck you’ll ever get.
7. Sometimes people suck, but a good dog loves you no matter what. They’re also a handy prop for meeting the opposite sex.
8. Your sex drive can give you the greatest joy you will ever know but can also get you into the biggest trouble you’ll ever know. Learn how to control it or it will control you.
9. Develop a relationship with a Higher Power. It will give you peace in your times of trouble.
10. Not everyone is going to like you. Sorry dude.
11. Make humility a verb in all things.
12. In your life you will go thorough crisis, tragedy, and unexpected change. Develop the tools to deal with these things before they arrive (because they will).
13. Stay the course.
14. Travel as much as you can. It will make you smarter, more interesting and more tolerant.
15. Learn how to tell a good joke and always have three ready to go.
16. One of the most important relationships you will ever have will be with money. One will be the master, the other will be the slave. Decide which one you want to be.
17. If someone says you can trust them, don’t.
18. When something isn’t going to work out, let it go. This rule applies equally to investments and love.
19. Sometimes you say the most by saying nothing at all.
20. Things are never as bad as they seem.
Good luck and have a good week.
Joe Still
2024.07.07
Cite
“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time, you just might find, that you get what you need.”
– Michael Philip Jagger