What Would I Tell My 20-something Self?
Good Life Project
Jonathan Fields / Acast
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 May 2017
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Short answer: chill out.
Slightly longer answer: Change the way you measure success, and run experiments.
For the next handful of years or, who knows, maybe even the next decade, use a different metric. Instead of money, power, prestige, rank, relative wealth or any of those things, elevate self-discovery as your primary measure of success. Because if you don't do it now, you'll find yourself yearning to do it 20-30 years down the road and wondering if it's too late.
That's what today's Good Life Project Riff is all about. In today's short and sweet jam, we offer three critical self-discovery questions, ones to ask yourself and use to guide what you say yes or no to. Ones that may take a lot of experimentation and a solid chunk of time to answer, but once answered will set up the entire rest of your life to "succeed" on a profoundly different and far more meaningful level.
Now, on to the three questions...
JF
P.S. Mistakes are OK.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's kind of funny. I am now in my early 50s, which surprises and shocks certain people |
| 0:08.6 | when they hear that. And increasingly over the years I've been asked sort of a variation |
| 0:13.8 | of the same question, which is what would you tell your 20-something self about life, |
| 0:18.8 | about work, about love, about play, all these different things. And over that same amount |
| 0:24.8 | of time, I've sort of developed maybe a bit of a different lens on how to best use that |
| 0:30.5 | window of your life, that season, sort of your 20s. So I figured I would share some ideas |
| 0:35.7 | and a bit of a set of very basic inquiries and hope that maybe it helps people navigate |
| 0:43.6 | that time and tap it in a way that allows them to set up the entire rest of their life |
| 0:49.8 | to live profoundly differently. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. |
| 1:19.8 | So what would you tell your 20-something self about what really matters in life? What |
| 1:40.8 | piece of advice or pieces of advice would you give that version of yourself? This is actually |
| 1:47.4 | a question that I've been asked a whole lot over my time, especially in the last decade |
| 1:52.2 | or so. And I figured that's what I want to focus on today. So as I sit here and record |
| 1:58.0 | this, I'm actually 51 years old and I've learned a lot. I've tried a lot. I've done a lot. |
| 2:06.9 | And I've had an amazing opportunity to work with and to mentor a lot of people over the |
| 2:12.1 | last few years who are in their 20s. And I've been thinking, what am I actually telling |
| 2:16.6 | them a lot? And how would I have changed what I did? So in my mid to early 20s, I got |
| 2:22.8 | out of college. I took a couple years off to travel and to do, I was literally selling |
| 2:28.9 | long-distance telephones or a restore to door. Wow, that was a tough job. And then I went |
| 2:34.2 | to law school. Then I was practicing law by the time I was in my late 20s. And I thought |
| 2:40.8 | I had to figure it all out. I had to focus in, figure out my thing and just totally dial |
| 2:48.5 | it in and then spend my whole life building that. So what would I tell my 20-something self |
... |
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