Know these things early in life to have a head start
Start early. Fail first. Learn fast. Live fully.
If you are given a chance to spend a month in your dream holiday spot, do you want to prepare for that ‘dream month’ or will you just lie on the couch and snore as if it is not a moment to look forward for? If you say you choose second option, then you are lying. Everyone on this planet who were designed to have dopamine in their body will be thrilled to start the trip and will spend every pre-journey second in equipping oneself with the necessary things that will help you in minting the trip in your memory book.
Life is the greatest journey a creature can have on this planet and without doubt humans have an additional advantage of and learning from the past instances and preparing for the life they are going to experience in advance by applying those lessons. Learning from the past is a good thing but takes time and efforts. Sometimes, the cost of learning those lessons could be very high. To avoid the delay in applying life’s greatest lessons, knowing and applying the following tidbits of wisdom from different aspects of life is important:
1.Finances
I would choose this aspect of life first, because it is not right to deliver sermons to a hungry stomach. Stabilized financial situation is necessary before going to other aspects. Without further delay, let us explore the things you must do early in your financial life.
a. Creating a budget for the month ahead, sticking to it, and analyzing the expenses at the end of a month. Additionally, segregate the expenses in 3 brackets-Needs, Wants, and Luxuries to know which one to cut next month
b. Saving early-If you are 15 years old and still haven’t started saving money, then you are very late in the investing arena. Do not spend all the money you get, save at least 20% of your earnings no matter what. Learn placing the financial goals before your temptations and you will appreciate your younger self on your retirement day
c. Knowing the power of compounding-I realized the power of compounding only after I read a mind blowing fact from the book ‘The Psychology of Money’ by Morgan Housel.
“$81.5 billion of Warren Buffet’s $84.5 billion net worth came after his 65th birthday.”
and you know what, Warren Buffet started investing when his age was 11 years and in his 54th year from then he acquired 96% of his wealth. This shows the power of compounding of money if you invest regularly and patiently from an early age.
There are so many money lessons to share but the above three are basic pillars of an efficient financial management to know at an early age.
2.Education
Next big thing comes ‘Education’. I am going to break some hearts here and am going to make some enemies, because I have found out some great myths from my experience which in contrary is fed into our minds to make some businesses flourish
a. School education does not help you- Schooling is a business rather than a personal development phase. Depend on self-learnt education and you will deal with daily challenges easily. Calculating the gravitational force between Earth and Sun will not help you in managing your life.
“Life’s challenges to no two people are even similar, then how come you teach life by giving same question paper in schools”
b. Skills are important than Knowledge- Knowledge is not power. Knowing how your 4-wheeler works is not going to help you until you can change the wheel by yourself. Knowing about the recipes without knowing how to cook is not going to satisfy your hunger. Embrace skills. Don’t rush to fill your brain with loads and loads of knowledge
3. Success
Earl Nightingale, the famous motivator, has defined success in simple terms in his “The Strangest Secret” as ‘the progressive realization of an worthy ideal”. Achieving Success is achieving happiness. Although this statement looks so simple, it is so complex in reality as your success may not be a cause of happiness. In this context, the important things you should know early in your life are:
a. Definition of Success differs- Success is not defined in an universal way. Success to you may not seem as so to someone else. Similarly, you may not consider others’ success, a success. Hence, do not compare the achievements.
b. Setting goals- The most important phase of achieving a success is setting the goals. If you set your goals and are passionate about achieving those, half of the work is done. Work on your goals from an early age. Observe yourself, know your passion, fix a goal with a purpose in it, and start working towards it. There is no chance of failure if you could find your life’s goal in the first place.
4. Relationships
If there is one aspect of life which was overlooked earlier but took the main stage in this ongoing pandemic situation, that is ‘Relationship’. Human being’s craving for another human has reached its zenith in this period. People realized the value of another human when they started to lose their loved ones, friends, family members. To avoid this situation, you should learn the following things early in life
a. The Skill of active listening- Listening is different from hearing. Hearing is letting the words of a person communicating with you reach your ears. But listening is going one step ahead, processing the communication by mixing it with ‘Empathy’. Try learning this skill early in your life, and you will observe some unexpected changes in your life.
b. Helping is growing- You cannot grow alone. Growth of an individual happens when a community grows. Be it your society, your organization, your class, or your home. If there is a weed in your garden, then it hampers the growth of the entire garden. No tree can survive alone. Helping others grow is one and only way to grow yourself.
5. ‘You’ for You
Last and important, let us talk about the most important aspect of your life, that is ‘You’. ‘You’ are most important person for You. You cannot prosper if ‘You’ are neglected. Learn this truth early in life so that you can harness the positive energy inside you and drain the equal and opposite energy
a. Know more about you- People do not bother knowing more about themselves than others. They take that knowledge for granted. But the truth is you do not know about yourself. Hence, the confusion about your goals, the conflicts in your relationships, the disappointments in life. If you know more about yourself, ‘You’ will let you know whom and what it wants, and what not.
b. Become an asset- There is so much knowledge on this planet. So much motivation, so many theories, so many models, but there is a scarcity of real practical resources who can lend a hand to others by leading by example. Invest in yourself, become an asset to yourself and others from an early stage in your life.
Bonus: The reason I chose this as a bonus tip is that it gets most attention and lets me convey the most important message to you all. That is ‘Reading’. Believe me, you can find a significant difference between the person who reads and who doesn’t. Choose yourself which category you want to see yourself in.
All the above mentioned things are very important to know early in your life, but reading supports you to know all these things without anyone’s help.
Be God with you always!
