106 might sound old.
Well, I’m not from your average Aussie family. My grandmother lived until 104 and my nanna died just before her 100th birthday.
So I figure with all the life extension technology coming, I should at least be able to make it to 106.
Here are the weird things I’m doing right now at 36 to avoid regrets at 106.
Forgiving people for no good reason
A few months ago I got introduced to a high-flying personality on the tweet app. We hit it off. We’re both from the finance industry & both a little odd.
He asked me to share a link on LinkedIn to something and I politely said no. This small action led us into some weird argument and he ended up calling me a bunch of nasty names and blocking me.
This has never happened to me before right after an introduction from a mutual friend. I felt angry and blamed myself.
Maybe I’m a snob?
Yesterday we unblocked each other and I said sorry, even though I didn’t call him names or start the argument.
It felt so good. I feel relieved. Every week while I was blocked I read his newsletter. There was no way not to read his newsletter, but on every occasion it brought up the painful situation.
Life is too short to hold grudges. Move on. Admit you’re wrong even if you’re not. When you’re dead the grudges won’t matter. So why wait?
Spending a stupid amount of time with my ball of snot
My daughter loves to cover my t-shirts in saliva, poop, and snot.
Since her birth I’ve spent a lot of time with her — more than any other fathers I know. A few friends called me weird. They are upset I don’t see them as much because of all the daddy-daughter time.
But I don’t care. Babies are only newborns once. I don’t ever want to miss a single moment. I want to be there to hear her first words, take her to her first immunization, see her first smile, and change her first diaper.
A former colleague of mine works 4 days a week as a senior leader.
He spends his fifth day of work working at his kid’s daycare center. People have judged him. He didn’t get a recent promotion because of it. And he’s okay with that.
Weirdly, not everyone understands the power of family.
Society thinks it can make up for lost family time later on. But it doesn’t work like that. If you’re not there for your kids then TikTok will take over the parenting for you … and we all know where that leads.
TikTok can program your kid’s mind to do all sorts of dumb stuff.
I know sacrificing my business a little to be with my daughter is strange. Most people in my little creator industry are alpha males chasing revenue targets as if they’re Pamela Anderson in the 1990s.
I don’t get it.
I don’t give a crap about revenue if it means I miss out on life.
Following this quote to the ends of the earth
A mentor sent me this quote:
Try for just a single day, a whole day when you refuse to acknowledge fear of failure, fear of making yourself look like an idiot, fear of losing your lover, fear of anything and of any kind.
Fear will creep back, but laugh at it and tell it to take a hike. Go on. I dare you. If you can do it, this will transform your life.
You will instantly perceive (among many other things) just how much money there is in the world, and how pitifully easy it is to obtain it.
Money that already has your name on it — Felix Dennis
Living fearlessly opens up so many doors that reduce regrets later in life. When your life sucks it’s easy to think you’re in a rut.
But as Alex Hormozi taught me, “my life sucks” equals “I have nothing to lose.” When you have nothing to lose it changes everything.
- You work harder.
- You stop filtering yourself.
- You don’t take no for an answer. You have a crack at new opportunities without giving a crap what happens.
Live as if you have nothing to lose because you don’t.
Even if you lose everything tomorrow, no one can steal your skills, experiences, and relationships from you. So it’s entirely possible to rebuild whatever got destroyed. Therefore, go get ’em.
Revisiting my past selves (woo-woo but stick with me)
You might think I just swallowed a magic mushroom. Hear me out.
One weird thing I’m doing is catching up with people I haven’t seen for years, and even decades. Why?
Meeting old friends helps you to dig up the past versions of yourself, as if you’re an archaeologist looking for lost Egyptian pyramids.
Those old friends see a version of you that’s frozen in time. Talking with them helps remind you how far you’ve come and to know where you came from. It’s a powerful experience everyone should do more of.
Assume people have good intentions
My online business requires me to trust strangers on the internet.
Some may try to rob me. Some may try to hack into my bank account and withdraw the $5 leftover after I bought a tin shack house in Australia a few weeks ago.
If I assume everyone is out to get me, I’ll never connect with the people who can change my business and life. So, I now assume people are good until proven otherwise. Same goes with listening. I try to interpret people’s words in an optimistic way.
The world looks different when you assume the best.
You feel more upbeat and make more meaningful connections that feel effortless.
Having more handwavy spiritual experiences
I love the gym.
Yet I have skinny arms and legs and look like I got run over by a motorbike at 3 AM. I’m okay with that. I don’t go to the gym for muscles.
I go for the spiritual experience. It’s why I don’t wear any headphones like everyone else in the gym, because they block out the present-moment-meditation working out can give you.
Too many people live with too much input. Someone’s always talking away in their ears as if they’re living in a metaverse created by Mark Suckerburger.
Spiritual experiences happen when there’s more silence. The new gym I just joined has a sauna.
I sit in there some mornings with sweat pouring out of me. It feels incredible. I can just live in the present and forget the material world for 20 minutes.
You even meet strange people. Yesterday I spoke to an IT executive.
He told me how his employer is dumb and he instructs his direct reports to say “I love my job, I love my job, I love my job” at the start of every meeting. It’s supposed to be a joke but it’s actually the truth, too.
The next challenge for me is to attend a silent retreat. I know I’ll regret not going if I don’t go and check out what all the fuss is about.
Silence is powerful.
Going back to childhood to discover the future
Our childhoods hold many gold nuggets.
I regret giving up playing the drums all those years ago. I’m about to start playing again for fun. I gave up swimming too.
Soon I’m booked in to take my daughter to swimming classes and learn to swim again. There’s something about reliving your childhood that’s so powerful, I can’t explain.
It’s one reason to have kids. Watching them grow up is a way to be a kid again without feeling guilty or looking weird. And I’m a big kid at heart.
Search your childhood for answers to the future.
Stop focusing on the way things should be
Life didn’t work out for me as I had planned it.
This led to a few regrets until I realized it’s better to live life based on the ways things are than how you insist they should be.
An unpredictable future provides more uncertainty and makes things interesting. Wanting everything to go your way and be predictable is the real societal epidemic. Just let the chips land where they fall.
Then deal with the hand you’re dealt the best you can.
Focus on lifestyle above all else
Many people live and make money to secretly achieve other people’s goals.
- What their parents want
- What they think will impress friends
- What they think will attract successful people into their lives
This is living in the external. I prefer to live in reverse. I focus on creating a lifestyle that matches what I want and I reject any interference from societal standards or influences.
Sure, I live in a house that looks boring from the outside. But I live there because I want to, not to look flashy and show off. I drive an 8 year old piece of crap Honda.
It still works and gets me around. I don’t have to stress about parking or scratches because the car is too old. I blend right in. People assume I’m poor and that’s the way I like it.
Often the wealthiest people have the worst-looking homes and cars.
Took me 20 years to learn that hard lesson. But when you don’t need to accumulate so much junk, you can invest in a lifestyle full of freedom and things you want to do.
Instead of a life of debt where you’re forced to do work you hate to pay off the debt and continue to look rich.
Time freedom is the ultimate success in life.
They’re all the weird things I’m doing to avoid regrets at 106. Looks like I’m going to be around for a hundred or so more years so let’s get comfortable and focus on regret minimization.
