Every year around my birthday, I like to take some time to pause and reflect on my life. It’s in these still, reflective moments that I find I’m able to see most clearly what’s been working, what’s not, and internalize the all the lessons I’ve learned over the last year. This year, I’ve pulled together a few of these fun ideas to share with you that I hope you’ll enjoy!

A good place to start is to define “wisdom” or what it means to be wise. Wisdom is one of those widely used terms that often gets mixed together with similar words like: smart, knowledgeable, etc., but there’s a fun quote that illustrates the distinction between wisdom and knowledge: “knowing tomatoes are fruit is knowledge, knowing not to put them in a fruit salad is wisdom.” Accumulating wisdom doesn’t happen through memorization of statistics or facts; true wisdom must be earned through life experiences and perspective.

The next idea I wanted to share is from the legendary investor, Charlie Munger. Charlie’s advice shared to audiences in various public forums over the years is to, “take a simple idea and take it seriously.” I’ve heard this quote before, but recently it’s resonated much more intensely with me. For so much of my life, I just assumed to achieve happiness, success, or status, I needed to find and conquer some very complex task. It didn’t occur to me that very basic ideas (working out, eating healthy, sleeping well, connecting with friends, etc.) taken extremely seriously could yield even greater results. Simple actions repeated over a long time horizons transform us, like water carving rock. Consistency, not brute force, is the stronger change agent.

The third idea I’ve been thinking about recently is “turning towards the difficult.” Sadly, I’ve noticed that a lot of human addiction is actually motivated by the desire to escape or distract from some uncomfortable or painful reality. Whether it’s excessive alcohol consumption, endless phone scrolling, or another self-destructive behavior, our human nature is to seek the path of less friction rather than confronting our fears and demons. But it’s precisely these challenging moments that present the biggest opportunity for personal growth and wisdom. Failure can be tolerated, but hiding from failure is actually the greater sin because it shadows the truth of what you’re capable of achieving.

Finally, earlier this year I published a short little post about the importance of making time. We live in (2023) what’s most certainly the noisiest, most distracting, attention-deprived, world at any given point in human history. To get back to doing what’s most meaningful and fulfilling, you must learn to ruthlessly remove your distractions. To find your distractions, reflect on how you like spending your days. Then, compare that answer to what you’re honestly doing. The contrast between those two should point you in the right direction. This practice of subtracting or removing distractions from your life requires you to first decide what’s important enough to keep and then leads to prioritizing what’s left.

And with that, I want to wrap up this post with a big thank you for taking your precious time to read my email or blog. Thank you for being a small or, in some cases, very large part of my life. And as always, if any of these ideas speak to you, I’d love to hear from you. Simply send me an email!