This is part 3 of 3 of my rambling advice for my daughter. Part 1 is here if you’d like to go!
Self
- Habits are much more powerful than you think
- If you can set yourself up with great habits, you’ll do the right thing without thinking about it. It’s so incredibly powerful, I wish I knew the details I know now when I was younger. Here’s a pretty good book on the subject!
- Optimism is much more powerful than you think
- Optimism is a magnetic and charismatic, if you can successfully build a reasonable habit of optimism it can assist you greatly in life. Here’s a good book on the subject! Here’s another!
- Master nonverbal cues
- Whether you’re talking about microexpressions or body language, recognizing and understanding them are important. Here’s a great book on the subject!
- Respect yourself, no one else will
- We unfortunately live in a world where most people will try to tear you down and keep you there. You have to respect yourself and figure out how much guff you’re willing to take to accomplish what you are looking to do. Just understand that if you don’t respect yourself, no one else will.
- Understand your weaknesses and strengths, it’s okay because everyone has them but use them to your benefit
- Everyone without exception has weaknesses, the trick is figuring out your weakness and making it a strength. To illustrate, I’m a very logical, organized, specific, detail oriented person. This can be a weakness if it’s not focused in the right way, like in relationships, I can fixate on specific details that drive your mother crazy. Focused correctly, it’s a benefit to work that I do. What are your weaknesses? How can they be turned into strengths that benefit you?
- Accountability, integrity and playing the victim
- My dad had a saying “Say what you mean, mean what you say” – if you say you’re going to do something, do it. He also liked to say “If it’s mine, I want it, if it’s yours I want you to have it.” Throughout life, we have to approach every situation with integrity and accountability. These attributes seem to be getting more and more rare. What I see so often anymore is people making a bad decision and playing the victim when the fault lies with them. It’s sad, and I know you are better than that, you have integrity and strength of character.
- Morality and absolute right versus absolute wrong
- Immoral and unethical people will call morality or ethics childish and that the moral/ethical should ‘grow up’ because ‘the real world’ doesn’t work that way. There are absolute rights and absolute wrongs in this world. As an example, it’s absolutely wrong that a man found liable for rape and over 30 counts of fraud be President of the United States. While it’s true that we live in a world of gray instead of black and white, it’s a spectrum. The spectrum has sides and on the far end of each side is absolute right and absolute wrong, please never lose sight of that.
- We create our own hell
- In my experience in working with people, and observations of my own life I’ve noticed that while our first reaction is to blame others for outcomes we don’t like in our life, in nearly all situations I’ve encountered it’s the decisions we make and not external forces that create our own misery. Please think about that when you make decisions, and don’t create misery for yourself.
- Think and speak constructively, not destructively
- The older we get, the more baggage we accumulate and frustration grows. I’ve noticed for a time I started thinking and speaking much more destructively than constructively. “This isn’t as good as…” or “It always goes poorly…” are examples of destructive speech or thinking. Constructive would be “This could be better if we…” or “This will go better next time if we…” Both essentially can say the same thing, but a constructive way of thinking helps me mentally and enables forward movement, while destructive thinking just tears things down and makes me mentally slow down and stop. It’s always better to think constructively.
- Learn how to learn instead of learning specific skills
- My career has required me to learn many things very quickly – I don’t think I’m unique in this regard. Instead of focusing on what I needed to learn, I instead focused on learning what I need to quickly and efficiently pick up new skills. That is the hurdle, not the required skill of the moment that will soon be not needed.
- The top things that will ensure your success in the world:
- How quickly you can adapt to present circumstance
- How good you can make people feel on a regular basis
- Your ability to have and use common sense
- How you develop constructive habits
- If it seems too good to be true, it’s probably a scam of some kind
- Pretty self-explanatory, I’ve found this to almost always be true.
