A few weeks after his thirtieth birthday, writer and entrepreneur Mark Manson appealed to the subscribers of his blog, who were over 37 years, with a request to share their life experience, collected during the period from 30 to 40 years. By combining all the answers, Mark got an impressive piece of collective wisdom.
More than 600 people responded to the request, many of whom sent detailed answers on several sheets. Examining them not without surprise, Mark found that 5-6 tips were repeatedly heard from a variety of people and, in one form or another, were recapped hundreds of times. Apparently, these several thoughts describe as accurately as possible what happens to a man, who has moved on to the fourth decade of his life.
1. Begin to save for retirement now, without delay
The most important advice that was present in virtually every received letter was to immediately begin to build the financial well-being, to start saving for the retirement age.
To do this, the readers have suggested taking the following steps:
- Make it your main goal to pay back all your debts and loans as soon as possible.
- Create a personal financial “stabilization fund” – thousands of people lose their means of livelihood due to health problems, lawsuits, divorce, problems in business, etc.
- Spend one third part of your salary on the accelerated payment of the loan or transfer it to a savings account.
- Discard the frivolous purchases. Do not buy housing until you can secure the best available conditions on a loan or mortgage.
- Do not invest in something you do not understand. Do not trust stockbrokers.
One reader wrote: “If your debts exceed 10% of your annual salary, this should serve as a serious warning to you. Stop unnecessary spending, pay off the debts, start saving.”
2. Start taking care of your health now, without delay
Your mind feels 10-15 years younger than the actual age of your body. Your health will vanish faster than you think and you do not even have time to notice this.
We all know how to take care of our health. Know how to eat, how to sleep, exercise and so on down the list. But, as in the case of pension savings, senior people share the same, unanimous opinion: become healthy and stay healthy in your old age. This was said by virtually everyone who took part in the poll, saying about the same thing – what you do with your body has a cumulative effect. Your body does not break down suddenly one day, it is gradually destroyed unnoticed for many years. Over the next 10 years, you should slow down this destruction.
3. Do not communicate with people who treat you badly
Learn to say “no” to people, actions and commitments that do not bring any value into your life.
Do not tolerate the people who do not treat you well. That’s it. Do not tolerate them for financial gain. Do not tolerate them for emotional reasons. Do not tolerate them for the sake of your children or your own good.
Do not let mediocre people into your life as friends, colleagues, love, relationships and life.
4. Treat those whom you care about well
Tragedies happen in everyone’s life, in each person’s family and among friends. Be the person who can be relied on at such moments. The gap between thirty and forty years is a decade when a lot of things start to happen with you and your dear ones, and it is unlikely you could even think about it. Parents die, your spouse dies or cheats you, children continue to be born, friends divorce…
Accordingly, speaking in favor of strengthening the personal boundaries to separate us from those whom we do not want to let into our lives, many readers advise to spend more time with those friends and family members who are really close to you and whom you can help.
5. You will not get everything possible – focus on what you really need to get
Everything in life is based on compromises. You sacrifice something to get another thing and cannot get both together. Accept this fact.
Focus. You can do better in life if you are focused on how to do one thing very, very well.
You have to accept the fact that you cannot have everything. To achieve something in life, it is necessary to sacrifice a lot.
6. Do not be afraid to take risks, you can still change
Although by the age of 30, the majority believes that we should stick to the chosen path, it is never too late to start all over again. There are many people, and most of them regret their decision to leave everything as it is, though they consider it wrong. This is such a quick decade of your life that makes days last as long as weeks and weeks – as long as years. At the age of 40, they find themselves in a midlife crisis taking absolutely no action to solve the problem of which they were aware 10 years ago.
Most of all, people regret the things they haven’t done.
Many readers are united by the decision to change their career after thirty and the subsequent improvement in their lives. One of them had given up a well-paid job of a military engineer to become a teacher. Twenty years later, he would call it the best decision in his life.
7. Keep self-improving
You have two assets the loss of which you will never be able to replenish: your body and your mind. Most people cease to develop and improve themselves after 20. Most thirty-year-olds are too busy to worry about self-development. But if you’re one of the few who continues to learn and develop thinking and takes care of mental and physical health, you will be light years ahead of your peers by the time you are 40 years old.
Your prime goal is the desire to become a better person, partner, parent, friend, coworker, etc. In other words, you should develop as a person.
8. Nobody understands what he is doing. Get used to it
One of the lessons that Mark Manson learned, summarizing 30 years of his life, was that nobody understood what they were doing. Judging by the letters written by forty-year-olds, this rule continues to work later in life – in fact, it works forever.
Most of what we think is important now will look absolutely unimportant 10 or 20 years later, and there is nothing wrong with that. This is called “development.” Just try to be not too critical about yourself.
9. Invest in your family – it’s worthy of it
Spend more time with the loved ones. When you are growing up, your relationships change, and the way they change depends on you. Your parents will always see you as a child until you show them you are an independent adult. Everyone gets older. Everyone dies. Use the time allotted to you to build the right relationship and enjoy family life.
Manson received a huge number of letters about the family and was astounded by their force. Family is a new big theme of the next decade of our life because it starts to touch us on both sides. Our parents are getting older, and we need to think how we will communicate with them as adults. We also need to think about creating our own family.
Most agree that it is necessary to leave behind all the grievances and problems.
10. Respect yourself
Although this idea was not so often reflected in the letters Manson received, he considered it one of the most important issues. You are the person who finds the things that happen in your life to be most important. Respect your interests and be focused only on them.
