6 Things I Learned This Year & Why It Is Important To You.

I can’t believe it’s already December of this year. I know they say time flies but they never tell you how fast it goes. For example, the…

I can’t believe it’s already December of this year. I know they say time flies but they never tell you how fast it goes. For example, the other day, I was on Instagram and realized that two years ago, I had just graduated from college. Excited, eager to start the next chapter of life, and surrounded by the people who loved me the most. Now here I am, writing an article about the things I learned in this transformative year of my life and hoping that it can help others think of their lives differently.

2023 taught me a lot of things and most of which, I am thankful for. Some things, I could have lived without. I grew up a lot this year mentally and there are just some things I would like to reflect on in this article. So.. You got a second?

In the interest of keeping this insightful, I will leave it to three things I learned in business and work then another three things that I learned about life. If you want to guess why I left it at six things in total, you can feel free to message me on Instagram or X about it and maybe I’ll send your inquisitive self a cookie. Let’s start with work:

1) If you want to be great at something, you MUST want it to storm

I asked this question to a friend once: If you needed the money and you had to sell your home, who would you trust the most? A realtor who has stomached three down markets in their fifteen years of being a full-time real estate agent? Or a realtor who is also a photographer, has three other side hustles nonrelated to real estate, and also travels the world for three months out of the year?

The realtor who has suffered through “the storm” of a down market three times is more likely going to be respected in the field and most likely will win more business in a time when the market is in great condition. So.. why is this important to know?

Because to be great at your craft, your career, and your hobbies, you have to be able to work within the storms and creatively think through your decision-making. It is much easier to steer a ship when there isn’t a storm in the ocean but that doesn’t make you an EXPERIENCED sailor. You must want it to storm, you must invite the hard days, and you must keep going no matter what. That is how you ultimately gain confidence in yourself and trust in the marketplace you operate in. You’ll look back on the days when you didn’t feel good and you still went to work. You’ll look back on the days when you had to push yourself through. This is what I learned about staying resilient with what I want to accomplish in life.

2. On a grand timescale, you can work on projects that are meaningful to you.. and love it

I get it. We want things to happen so fast for us. It’s just the nature of how things go for people who have large appetites in life. It is especially true with people who grew up without having nice things. Some of us work to get material goods for ourselves. Some of us want to work to bring “financial freedom” to our families. Some of us want to dominate the industries we work in. Some of us want to be known for the art we create.

What I learned is that sometimes we don’t understand how long it takes to achieve these generational goals and I am certain that is why people burnout. Or at least have a huge hand in burning people out. I’ve seen entrepreneurs quit after 7 months and pivot into a whole other new business. I’ve seen people quit their jobs in less than a year because they didn’t feel like they were making an impact. I’ve seen people who had a great idea for a YouTube channel and quit after seven videos. I’ve seen people change careers to pursue more money to immediately “flex” on Instagram. Things that end up putting away all of the quick, short-term plans they made for themselves.

I have decided to pick one North Star for my career. Some day, I may achieve it and that’ll be great. Some day, I may not and that will be okay because I know I spent my whole life, decades, trying to make it work. In some weird way, it is so much more fulfilling for me now that I know I am in the position to try and achieve this massive goal I have for myself.

I introduced myself to consistency and we both fell in love.

3. The only failure possible in your career is not changing behaviors

As I have previously written about in other articles, I took some hard hits this year. Knocked me down to my ass and had to ask people for help. It was embarrassing and humiliating. In retrospect, I am thankful for the lesson learned. Today, I am a better man for it because I crawled my way out of it. and I also realized who was who in my life. A lesson that no pretty penny can teach you.

Why is this important for you to know? Because there is going to be a time in your life where you will feel as if you are failing. Life is going to take a big ol’ shit on you and punch you in the stomach. You may be in that phase right now. The only thing I would say is that you are going to be okay.. if you decide to make a change. People love to beat themselves up and volunteer to be their own worst critics. I know I do. But at some point, you will have to decide to be better. Life requires so much out of us and we get so defeated sometimes that we don’t realize our true potential. The easiest thing to do is just understand for yourself that tomorrow you can be better. Tomorrow, you can be better, faster, stronger, smarter, more accepting, more forgiving, better attitude, whatever it takes to push you out of the rut you’re in and you have to do that every single day.

Believe in the better version of you and be it. Stop letting life mold you and your thoughts. If you don’t get up, be better, and design a life you really want for yourself, believe me, society will design one for you to have whether you like it or not.

And now for more personal ones...

4. My life only moves in one direction: forward.

I hate that I am a very nostalgic human being. I hold on to things way longer than I should. I remember when I was a little kid, I would cry all the time if I lost an action figure that I really liked. These days, I reminisce a little bit too much on people who used to be in my life. Some I still very much wish still were. The memories create a scar in my brain that reminds me these people aren’t in my life anymore.

It’ll shock you how much things never happened in this world. People will turn their back on you. People will leave you on read. People will cancel plans. People will go back on their word. People will lie to you. People will act like they never shared intimate moments with you and you will have no other choice but to move forward. What I’ve learned is that some disconnections are truly a blessing whether you know it now or later. My belief in the Lord’s plan for me, and my trust in His vision for my life, puts me at ease with all of the losses I have ever taken.

The one thing that helps me out a lot with this is just telling myself that I haven’t even had the best day of my life yet. If I keep telling myself that every day, I’ll keep looking forward to it and that makes me hopeful.

5. The opposite of a good idea is always going to be another good idea; keep trying new things

I am lucky enough to have a career where creatively, I can throw a lot of stuff at the wall to see what sticks. I believe that in any creative job, your work is only as good as how much of life you have experienced. Let me explain...

I run advertisements for business owners and the foundation of every single one of my work is a good idea and written content. That’s why I write so much. One time when I used to work with this local car dealership, I had two ideas for an ad that was supposed to bring in leads for people who are interested in purchasing a vehicle. I spent days pondering on which one was the right idea and eventually I ran both. One was your run-of-the-mill, “come on in for a weekend sale” type of ad. Conventionally, how it is always done. The other was a little different. See, a couple of weeks before this campaign was supposed to run, I was out at a sports bar with my friend watching the Chiefs football game on a Thursday night. It hit me. This local car dealership's customer base loves their Chiefs football. So I designed a meme ad where Patrick Mahomes, the franchise quarterback for the Chiefs, was throwing a set of keys at the customers. It was a bit goofy at the time but I got approved by the owners and I ran it alongside the conventional ad.

This campaign brought in 52 leads in four days at $7.80 per lead. Needless to say, I got paid handsomely for it. My point is this: your ability to think creatively, to think outside of the box, is correlated to how much of life you let yourself experience. Creativity is a 24/7 type of skill and no, you don’t get to choose when a creative idea hits you but you do get to choose to let these ideas run around in your head when you’re out and exploring the world. Let yourself experience the world.

6. Never judge people based on how they cope with different issues in life

This one was the most “adult” thing I have learned this year. Look, we are all human. We have preconceived notions about alcoholism, addiction, rage, anger, stress eating, etc. It is so easy to have opinions on these things when you live on a castle on the hill and think you’re so righteous because you’re geographically closer to God than the rest of us. I learned that it is entirely different when you witness someone close to you go through these things.

It hurts me to see someone else suffer but it hurts even more when you see for yourself how they choose to deal with the suffering. I have always been a pretty clean guy, I can moderate all of my consumption, my anxiety, my depression, and my thoughts. I can compartmentalize different things in my head. With that being said, I can clearly see when someone is using substance to deal with their emotions and sometimes I just don’t know how to respond except to be there with them when they need to just let things out.

In the book called “You’re Not Listening” By Kate Murphy, she addresses the issue of loneliness in the world we live in by saying that most people who deal with loneliness in their lives have a direct correlation to the number of people who don’t just listen to them as who they are and what they are trying to say. When I first read this, I was shocked at the thought of it but the older I get, the more I realize that so much gets lost when two people are trying to talk over each other. We don’t take the time anymore to just hear someone out.

I am the oldest of four in my family. I have learned throughout the years that sometimes, people just want someone to talk to. They need someone to vent to. Someone who will listen without judgment. Someone who will listen to understand, not listen to respond and come up with solutions. Someone to ask all of the hard questions. Someone that they can trust. Sometimes people just want to let their emotions out because they have no one else in their lives who will hear them talk. That’s why I thoroughly enjoy it when my drunken friends are at the bar talking to me about their subconscious issues. Some of these conversations, I know I'll never hear when they are sober. I don’t do this to give brotherly advice, although sometimes I do, but other times, I just want them to know that I am here for them. Sometimes, that’s all I can really do.

2023 was a growing year for me. I definitely feel like I’ve earned some stripes in being a responsible adult in this world. I am taking care of my finances, I am clear on what I want out of life, and I am working on being a better person so that I can best serve those around me. I genuinely hope you got something out of this article and I hope you enjoy my writing. Message me which one you liked the most and your favorite takeaway from this article. It means so much to me that you guys read my stuff.

If anything, I want you guys to have a happy holidays and safe travels to those who are going to be in and out. I know how hard the holidays can be just try to reflect on how much you (and I) have grown this year and we still made it out... Better yet, we have another year coming up and that’s always a great opportunity to look forward to the future.

Thank you for reading.

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