The Looking Glass is a weekly newsletter of timeless wisdom for you to ponder on your journey of growth. I hope you find great value here.
#9 – 24 Jun 2022
Hello friends,
Thanks again for being here!
Here’s an insight, a question, and a quote I reflected on over the last week.
💡 There’s no rush to have it all figured out
Do you beat yourself up for not having life all figured out in your 30s? (or insert 20’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, and so on)
I find myself putting all this undue pressure on myself, but all it seems to be doing is making me miserable. There is no linear path to “success” in life. We are all on different journeys, starting from different places, with differing values. So the comparison to others is not helpful.
Is all that self-imposed pressure actually helping you on your path to “success”?
One of the great myths we have as children is that adults have it all figured out, and one day we will become adults and have it all figured out. But that never happens. Each decade you realise that feeling seems further and further away, and it’s like chasing a mirage on the horizon.
What if there is no final “figuring out”?
As we grow, we realise how much more we don’t know.
Sometimes we may even think we are beyond the “prime” of our life, but then we strike gold. Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) is a classic story of late entrepreneurial success.
The real Col. Sanders was an entrepreneur who didn’t become a professional chef until he was 40, didn’t franchise Kentucky Fried Chicken until he was 62, and didn’t become an icon until after he sold his company at 75.
Richard Feloni, Business Insider
Some may think that our best years may be behind us once we get past our 20s and 30s, but we never know what is around the corner.
These lines from the wise podcast host Rich Roll caught my attention:
“… We’re two guys in our mid to late 50’s who, on some level, one thing we share is that we are both hitting a certain kind of stride in our lives, and I came to this very late, and I feel like I finally found this thing that I’m good at and people seem to enjoy and I want to make hay while I can.”
Rich Roll
Rich found fame and success through his podcast, but only after years of battling alcohol addiction and working his way to sobriety and then becoming an accomplished ultra-endurance athlete and author of his inspirational memoir – Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World’s Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself. The podcast was established from humble beginnings in 2013, which over years of hard work and consistently showing up, has established itself as regular in the iTunes top-10 lists.
When he was in his 30s, he had no idea he would become a top-10 podcaster. There was no grand plan. Podcasting didn’t even exist as a potential career at that point.
The lesson here is that we never know what life has in store for us. But if we show up daily and take action, then possibilities emerge.
Remember, life is a long-term game, and there are no shortcuts. Expand the time horizons of what you want to achieve. There is no rush to figure it all out in the next 12 months.
Stay focused and on the path. Eventually, things fall into place.
❔Avoiding certain conversations
Sometimes we avoid conversations because we are scared of what the answer might be:
“I don’t want to find out that I don’t want to be in that relationship, or that job, or that…”
What conversation are you afraid of?
Maybe there is wisdom to be discovered in that conversation.
💬A Quote to Ponder – On looking
“Noone is perfect. If you look for the bad you will find it. If you look for the good, you will find it. Choose wisely what you look for.”
Lex Fridman
Cheers!
