19 Lessons from 2019

#19 — Eat the ice cream and buy the damn wipes.

It’s a tradition that every year, I dispel the top lessons from my life for that year with the goal of being helpful and inspiring people to approach the following year with an optimistic outlook.

Every year there is a key theme. This year’s theme has been dominated by career challenges, although I’m going to go broader than that. (Okay Tim shut up with the preamble and get on with it dude.)

Here are the lessons from 2019:

1. Be the example

When you’re not sure what to do and one area of your life goes into meltdown, rather than complain, be the example. What do I mean?

• If people are excluding you, act inclusively.
• If people are being mean, be kind.
• If you feel terrible, smile at people anyway.
• If life gifts you a lemon, learn the lesson and use it to make you stronger.

You can’t choose what happens but you can choose to be the example. The world around you is changed not by your thoughts but your actions and the example they display to everybody silently paying attention.

2. Rejection makes you stronger

This year has been full of rejection. I’ve been told I’m not entrepreneurial enough, I’m sh*t for leaving a job before twelve months, I’m too old, I’m too inexperienced, I’m too experienced, I’m not what they are looking for — and the list goes on.

Each rejection was hard until after so many, I just used them all as motivation to get what I wanted: a new career. When the rejection came, I pushed harder and assertively argued my way into positive situations that I was often told “weren’t going to happen.”

Well, I did get a hold of those hard to reach people, get asked to interview for roles that were outside of my normal criteria, got given many compliments, made friends with recruiters and hiring managers, and managed to survive it all.

If it weren’t for rejection, I would have taken a pre-packaged career off the discount shelf at The Reject Shop and been miserable.

3. The year of the creator

This year has seen my writing career explode. The audience size has got bigger and I have been lucky enough to earn a decent living from my side-hustle. Thanks to writing, when I lost my job earlier in the year, I had plenty of money to take a chill pill and sort out my life and insecurities.

If it weren’t for writing, I might have been tossed to the street without a few dollars to pay the power bill and drink a 4 AM green smoothie.

Adding a bit of creativity to your life really helps you think differently. This year, thanks to my writing, I have been forced to see the lesson in every situation. Even when the situation stank like shit, I managed to find the lesson and turn it into healthy manure for the garden bed of my mind.

Maybe you’re not a writer, but you sure as hell can do something creative. Maybe it’s worth a shot next year if you haven’t started. If you have, keep going.

4. Stay clear of incompetent tyrants

I worked for a tyrant of a boss and learned a huge lesson: stay clear of people who seek to destroy others to make themselves feel better about their crappy life.

You get to choose what leaders you bring into your life and my advice would be to choose wisely. What I didn’t do was ask enough questions and do enough reference checks. Had I have done so, I would have seen Hitler’s shadow right behind me before it cost me my leadership gig.

There are old school tyrants floating around and we help them to change their ways by voting with our careers and choosing a leader, not a boss.

5. Be yourself

Every day this year, people have told me how they’d like me to be through the inboxes of social media. It has been a tough fight not to be swayed by those opinions.

Everyone wants you to be somebody else and the hardest thing to do is be yourself.

Only you know what truly makes you happy and gives you joy and fulfillment. Chase that rainbow for the rest of your life and enjoy the run. Just because someone wants you to change, doesn’t mean you should.

6. It’s okay to *not* be okay

This short sentence really seemed to make an impact this year. Every time I said it, people took away different meanings from it.

I first used this sentence to describe what it was like to be given a dream career, complete a round of high-fives, be congratulated and then have it all turn to dust months later.

We all have tough times in our lives and we’re not always going to be okay. Admitting you’re not okay is a thought you plant in your mind that allows you to grow past the difficult situation.

I took some time off this year and traveled and read heaps of books. Those books I read when things weren’t okay gave me the confidence, tools, and mindset to stand back up again and say, “Not this time amigo — I’m back.”

If you’re not okay, take some time off. Go easy on yourself and let the process of recovery take place.

7. Share your thoughts

There have been many thoughts I have shared on social media in 2019.

There was the family friend that disappeared and was found dead; there were the stories of attempted suicides from readers; there was the inspiring story of Michael Crossland who beat cancer four times; and then there were small lessons, quotes, and books that I shared from my life.

Each time you share your thoughts, you get better at it. Your thoughts become more succinct, you become a lesson-extracting machine, and you help a few people who are going through their darkest hour. We all have access to free social media platforms. Maybe 2020 is the year to use yours.

8. Get fired and let it reinvent your career

Being fired was challenging but now at the competition of 2019, looking back, it has reinvented my career.

The opportunities that ended up finding their way to me were even better than the one I had. It certainly didn’t feel like that would be the case when the situation went down one Friday afternoon, but it all worked itself out for the better.

The good people did good and the bad people did bad — and got a step closer to changing their ways.

Being fired takes you away from your habits and makes you reassess your whole life. For many of us, that’s exactly what we need.

9. Be kinder than the year before

A big change this year was learning to be more kind towards the audience I write for. Earlier in my blogging career, I was a fraction too blunt and didn’t consider people’s situations enough.

This year has shown me the power of using a little kindness in my writing so that I can touch the hearts of readers and allow them to contemplate new ideas and thoughts.

This year I gave people the strategies, contacts and ideas (that I used to keep for myself) to the audience.

It might seem stupid but I have never regretted the positive effects of being generous when the world teaches us to be selfish.

10. Say goodbye no matter how much it hurts

Going through a loved one’s possessions and dividing them up after they pass away is not easy.

When their body is put in the ground, all that is left is their stuff. The photographs and bits of paper they wrote on remind you of who they were. They also remind you of who you are and where you came from.

I used to take for granted my family roots. Not anymore. Now I look at my family as a clue to my future.

Saying goodbye always hurts and the process will teach you many things about yourself that you didn’t know before. Don’t wait until people die to appreciate them. Love them now.

11. Use a bit of your good fortune to create more

This year has brought me a lot of good fortune and its taught me that if we want to create more of it, we need to give some of it away.

Good fortune compounds like the interest you are paid on your savings when you help other people with it. I have written more this year than any other year and that has allowed me to reach more people and be helpful.

A few people have been given gifts without my name being attached to it (the best kind) and many readers have paid the good fortune forward and found their own way to be helpful. This is the circle of life my 104-year-old grandma dreamed of. (Its been a pleasure grandma.)

12. Make more time for those you love

This year has been about balance. I learned in Q3 that I needed to make more time for the people that love me.

You can’t do the creative work you love, while in the other room your family are dying to see you and hoping you’ll open the door and give them a kiss. Finding ways to make my career, writing, and family all share my fragile body for however long this big ball of round dirt gives me has been a challenge.

Do you need to work so hard? That’s the question that starts the process.

13. See life for what it is

This year has really opened my mind a lot to the idea of one’s existence. Here is how I think about it:

• We’re here for a short time
• No one has time to worry too much about every little thing you do
• Think about how you want to be remembered
• You’ll feel better about life when you’re more positive
• Time passes quickly. Stop and take a look once in a while

14. Try being more humble

A little bit of success can go to our heads. The antidote is being humble.

You may be a big shot because of your career or your financial situation or your social media account or the awards you’ve won — try toning down your own awesomeness so you can see other people’s.

Humility is the most powerful human trait that makes people get out of their chairs and give you a standing ovation without really being able to explain why they’re doing it. They’re doing it because you put your own awesomeness second in service of something bigger than yourself.

15. Spend time with people you don’t see often but feel like you’ve been sitting next to the whole time

There are a handful of people in my life that I see rarely and when we catch up, it feels as though we’ve seen each other every day.

These are the people that are always there for you and will have your back when the inevitable setbacks find their way into your life. These are the people you could not see for ten years and then pick up the conversation where you left off as though no time had passed.

There are some people who are supposed to enter your life and never leave you until your dying days.

These are the people you do a life sentence with and they make you really happy for reasons you are unable to explain fully.

16. Not giving up pays off

This year I made it into a bunch of major publications who have rejected my work since I began writing in 2014.

Every week I emailed them new work. Towards the end of this year, they finally started hearing me through the deafening noise of their inbox. They took my work, made it better, and shared it with much larger audiences than a dude from Australia with Dumbo ears could ever do on his own.

If you have a goal and it’s right in front of your pretty face every morning while you get ready for work, it’s hard to not achieve when you apply a stupid amount of persistence that makes onlookers think you’re crazy (or stupid).

17. You got to keep going no matter how much it hurts

A buddy of mine met a self-help guru in the toilet who was screaming their lungs out from the pain of a recent surgery. He shared the story with me.

Even though he was going through immense pain while on the film set of a documentary they were making together, he made it look like nothing.

He looked calm, relaxed and in control. The truth was his insides were on fire from the pain and he’d mastered his state and mindset to keep going. When you focus on the task at hand and not the pain you might be experiencing, you can do incredible stuff you never thought was possible.

18. Make plans for next year in advance

I typically make decisions about the following year way too late. Not this time. In 2019, I have made my intent for 2020 crystal clear.

It feels good to be riding the wave into the next year and knowing what is going to be a priority. You know what’s funny? Next year’s priorities are identical to this years with one subtraction: career change.

With career change done, I can focus on an even smaller list of priorities. Here’s the list:

• Continue making time for loved ones
• Continue pumping out written articles
• Continue doing my best at my 9–5
• Continue posting daily on social media

That’s pretty much it for 2020 — more of the same so I can keep achieving the same compounded results.

19. Eat the ice cream and buy the damn wipes

To finish off 2019, I have decided to remind myself and you, not to take it all too seriously.

My friend Kristen and her dog Dolly sell wet wipes for a living and both do comedy as part of the act. It’s incredible and always makes me smile. Her philosophy on life and the best lesson for this year is this:

“Eat the ice cream and buy the damn wipes.”

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