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07/12/2024
Every year around my birthday, I review my journal entries, stories, and writings from the prior year to create a list of personal lessons about life and work. Sharing them with you has become one of my favorite traditions over the past decade.
This one is coming a little later due to my recent trek to the Camino de Santiago, but it’s finally ready. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them. Let’s dive in:
- Host more celebrations. Milestones are just as important as beginnings and endings.
- Create space for longer meetups with your closest friends. Long walks, full days, overnighters. Some of the most important conversations happen after you seemingly run out of things to talk about.
- Outdoing others is helpful every once in a while. But sometimes, underdoing others is just as helpful.
- Look up more often. Most of our days are spent looking down, often at some screen, which can make your world seem small and your problems huge. Looking skyward flips that.
- Your relationship with money is a garden. Tend to it often, or it will be taken over by things you never wanted and don’t belong there.
- Give away your time well. Be all-in when you’re with someone. Then work to recharge fully.
- A Leap is as much about where you are as it is where you want to be. Start by understanding what’s here and now and why you need to shift.
- If you’ve wronged someone, do whatever you can to make it right. Most of the work starts with either forgiving yourself or letting go of the grudge. Then (and only then), can you address the other person. If they’re no longer here, find a way to forgive and move forward. Let it go.
- If you have any inkling to give something away, do it. You’ll rarely regret it and it’ll help you strengthen two core tenets of a full life: hold things more loosely and share things more freely.
- Go to the doctor sooner than you think you should.
- When your back is against the ropes, you can either fight back or leave the arena. Both are fine options. The one thing you should avoid is only fighting partially — that’s when you get knocked out.
- Preparation is as important as participation.
- If everything you do is a dramatic save, you (and your relationships) won’t last long. Learn to do things in your life more easefully. And don’t just make it look easy, actually make it easier.
- The more things you make easier to do, the more headspace you have for new and meaningful challenges.
- No team or company will really thrive without a consistent management operating system. If it’s not clear, consistent, and accepted by all, it will fail.
- Take a sabbatical as soon as you think you might need one. There is no perfect time.
- Open your home as often as you can. Host visitors, travelers, and even the occasional stranger. They’ll lead to some of your most beautiful relationships.
- Your mental chatter will eventually spill out onto the people you love most. This is why inner work is so important. Be kind to yourself.
- Would your younger self be proud of who you are today? If the answer is yes, celebrate. If it’s no, make a change.
- Learn to laugh at things that once seemed annoying or frustrating. The lighter you hold those things, the sweeter life will be.
- If you need a change, give yourself a timeframe and then begin. Life can change faster than you think.
- You probably need more boundaries. Share yourself a little less. Care about everything a little less.
- Care for your colleagues and clients as people first. Whether or not they can do anything for you should have nothing to do with how you treat them.
- Pay attention to the rituals of your life, especially the unconscious ones. (ie: if you’re on your phone first thing in the morning, that’s a ritual.) Try to only keep the rituals you would teach to your best friend’s kids.
- Attend more theater, even if you’re not a theatre person. Find ways to experience other people taking a live stage. Let yourself get lost in art that fully unfolds right before your eyes.
- Every once in a while, give gifts that are designed to be shared with others. Helping people tap into their generous spirit is good for everyone.
- Nothing is for everyone. The sooner you realize that, the more free you’ll be.
- Our minds are a series of paths, holes, and ladders. Sometimes you fall into a hole and that’s ok. The goal is to learn to build and use ladders for those moments.
- Your strongest desire is not always your deepest desire.
- You’ll never connect deeply with someone if you don’t remain genuinely curious about them. Once you stop being curious is when you’ll begin to drift apart.
- You’ll never know the joy of kindness if you can’t first feel and relate to someone else’s hurt.
- If your mind is in overdrive, stop trying to solve things and listen instead. Understanding leads to peace.
- If you think you really want something, imagine getting it. Then imagine the feeling of getting it. What is the *feeling* you think that thing will give you? Are there any other ways to get to that place?
- Every so often, look back at your recent work and critique it as if you are that person’s manager. How would you encourage them? What feedback would you give? Then do the same for your current projects. Leading yourself is harder than leading others.
- Supplements are rarely the answer to whatever you’re facing. They can help, but they have to accommodate the real work.
- If there’s a part of yourself you dislike, you’ll never change. Get to know that part like you’d get to know your best friend. All personal growth starts with acceptance.
- Do things that make you smile more. Go for a hike, race a car, stay in a nice hotel room, eat strawberries and cream on a summer night, read a book in a park until you doze off.
- If you are always rushing to a destination, you’re missing some of the best parts.
- Write regularly. Then, each year, see what themes emerge and use them as a clue for what you need to start, continue, or stop doing next.
If you’re reading this, thanks for being in my life for another year. Grateful for you.
– Victor
