Things I’ve Learned the Hard Way

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I’m now in my 48th year on the planet and like most people at this stage of life, there are a few things I’ve learned the hard way.

1. Few people recover completely from deep-rooted emotional trauma. Early in my adult life I was involved with a woman that had major emotional challenges growing up. These were the types of challenges that could land you on an Oprah episode. I thought I could be the knight in shining armor. After all, I had an idyllic upbringing and I thought I could help her. I learned that these types of issues don’t go away. While psychological help can make a difference, it’s very rare that people ever get completely past these types of challenges.
2. You can’t change people long term unless they want the change themselves. If someone is making the change for your sake, it won’t last. If you are entering a relationship with the intention of changing something significant about your partner, ask yourself if you can accept the shortfall in question long term. If the answer is no, move on. You can’t help people that don’t want to help themselves.
3. As humans we give ourselves far too much credit for what we know. Nobody, regardless of how intelligent they are, can predict the future. I used to follow people I believed to be investment gurus. The things they said were so brilliant. I thought how could it possibly turn out any other way? After losing a large portion of my net worth, I realized that people can be right on a few calls, but there’s always something unanticipated that manifests. Black swan events will always happen. None of us has the ability to make consistent predictions long term.
4. Successful people have an inner knowing. Deep down most know they will be successful even before it happens and refuse to accept any other outcome. When they stumble they understand that it’s a bump in the road and quickly make a course correction to refocus on their goals. This knowingness expresses itself as confidence. Confidence attracts other people, and fuels success.
5. Arrogance will come back to bite you. If you are arrogant, you believe you know more than anyone else. If you know everything, why listen to others when you have the answers? These people typically surround themselves with people that fuel their ego and tell them what they want to hear. They rarely get candid feedback. At some point they lose touch with reality and business suffers. The enemies they have created from treating people badly will find that point of vulnerability. The CEO of a firm I used to work for made many enemies through his arrogance. As soon as he stumbled, those people took him down.
6. Surround yourself with people smarter than you are. No matter how intelligent you are, you can’t know it all. Find experts for your areas of inexperience and leverage them to help drive your decisions.

In life we learn through experience. Our most powerful lessons are realized through our missteps. Hopefully you take to heart some of things I’ve learned the hard way to avoid a few challenges of your own. If you have thoughts from your own experiences please send them along to me at [email protected].