Life lessons from a 44 year old (2022)

Learn to recognize kindness and do not mistake it for niceness. Kind people are always nice. Nice people aren’t always kind.<p>Before entering into a relationship with someone else, make sure you understand and own your own traumas, have accepted yourself and are content with who you are. You cannot do that easily with the added complication of a relationship. It adds a dynamic that will trigger every single unrecognized negative personality trait you have, and that will trigger theirs.<p>People move large distances to live somewhere else for love, work or to escape. Be careful you aren’t running away from yourself.<p>Your children will grow up quicker than you think. Those moments at every step of their development you will never have again. Before you know it you won’t be able to lift them up on your arm. Before you know it they spend most of their time with their friends and think you’re old and dumb. Before you know it they’ve moved out and are living far away. Before you know it you get to speak to them once a month on the phone.<p>You parents won’t always be around. If your parents are 65 and you see them once a year, you’ll see them an estimated grand total of 10-15 more times if you’re lucky.<p>Practice analyzing risks before making crucial decisions, but do not become paralyzed by your risk analysis.<p>Choosing not to do something is also a decision.<p>Your health is the most important valuable thing you ever have.<p>And use sunscreen.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;sTJ7AzBIJoI?si=BMkcy1smNMCMykbf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;sTJ7AzBIJoI?si=BMkcy1smNMCMykbf</a>

&gt;1. Don’t exercise to be thin. Exercise to be strong.<p>I am convinced that being strong is the single most important thing any human being can do once all of their basic needs are met.<p>After having entered thousands of houses as a volunteer EMT and seeing people younger than my parents who on the verge of becoming incapable of self-sufficient living due to frailty, no other problems just muscle (and bone) loss, I am absolutely irrefutably convinced that every single human being on earth would benefit from pumping some iron.<p>I just looked it up and even patients with brittle bone disease are highly encouraged to become as strong as possible through physical therapy because of the benefits of being strong.<p>There is but an insignificantly vanishingly small sliver of humanity too sick to strength train, even if it is just overhead pressing some cans of chicken noodle soup while you watch tv.

I am almost exactly this age and almost exactly agree with all of these. I can&#x27;t even pick a single one to argue with.<p>I&#x27;ll pick this as a favourite; &quot;17. All kids ever want is you. Your full undivided attention. Even twenty minutes of that in a day is better than a whole afternoon of scrappy conversations and phone scrolling.&quot;<p>So much friction with kids is solved by giving them undivided attention (even briefly).

In 50+ years I&#x27;ve learned one thing.<p>When you have a kid. Drop EVERYTHING in your life, take off (completely) from work and spend your days with them. For at least a month or two. Make breakfast, watch little kid shows, all that.<p>Yeah money, but you have decades to earn money. Those couple months you won&#x27;t get back.

Some good points. I&#x27;m reading this from the perspective of someone who has long since left the 40&#x27;s behind.<p>1. Don&#x27;t exercise to thin. Exercise to be strong. --&gt; Especially as you get older, strength diminishes. Exercise enough to keep your strength. This has so many positive knock-on effects.<p>10. The small details of your day matter. --&gt; They really do. We&#x27;re all busy, but make time to read a book, to play a silly video game, to go for a hike. My favorite saying: &quot;Enjoy life. This isn&#x27;t a dress rehearsal.&quot;<p>11. Allow friendships to come and go. --&gt; It seems to get more difficult to find friends. Fewer oppportunities, and we get picker. Another saying: &quot;Everyone is someone else&#x27;s weirdo.&quot; Enjoy your weirdness, take other people as they are, and find friendships in unexpected people.<p>14. Everyone should go on a course before becoming parents, to find out exactly how their own parents traumatised them. --&gt; You will avoid your parents&#x27; mistakes and traumatize your children in new and unexpected ways. We&#x27;re all amateurs at this, just doing the best we can.<p>18. Put your phone down. Put your phone down. Put your phone down. --&gt; This is surprisingly hard. What I am doing just now???

As someone who cannot be a parent, I&#x27;ll ignore the parent-focused ones, though you may still enjoy the curiosity and personality of your nieces and nephews (if you have them)!<p>&gt; The small details of your day matter. Be it your first cup of coffee in the morning, or the way you make your bed, or a walk through the park on the way to work, life is year upon year of stacked up small joys like these. Take pleasure and pride in them.<p>But among other good nuggets, I think this can be missed. We often look forward to &quot;big&quot; events in our lives, but I think it&#x27;s also important to structure a life where you get to enjoy a series of little things each day.

Good advice.<p>One thing I&#x27;d add is that having a kid is very different than I imagined. I assumed it would be a slog like doing chores, but you&#x27;d feel accomplished at the end (like having a clean house).<p>Instead, it&#x27;s way more fun than I imagined, more similar to playing a funs port. It&#x27;s very enjoyable, but breaks and rest time are welcome.<p>I&#x27;m not sure I agree on the &quot;reach out 3 times and then stop reaching out&quot;.<p>I have some friends who are <i>terrible</i> at social situations. They don&#x27;t reach out to anyone. They&#x27;re homebodies, and lonely, and often find excuses. Gently asking once every few weeks if they want to get together seems to be what they need. Sometimes it takes 3 tries on average, on occasion more, sometimes less.

OK, now I’m scared. I’m reaching an age where life lessons can be given. Didn’t expect that for today.

Here&#x27;s a prelude I&#x27;d add: work out if you really want kids before you have kids. I mean, if you really want kids or it&#x27;s expected, you&#x27;re doing it because your partner wants kids or you just want adult children without wanting to do everything in between it takes to get there.<p>Spend an hour on &#x2F;r&#x2F;regretfulparents and see it resonates at all.<p>it takes an unbelievable amount of time, energy and sacrifice to raise children. Providing for their materials needs like working hard to pay for college while not actually spending time with them will do them absolutely no favors. If you&#x27;re just going to put them in front of screens, in school, in after-school care, etc so you don&#x27;t actually have to devote attention to them then don&#x27;t have them. You will be better off. Creating a new generation of people who have to work through the trauma of not really being wanted is best avoided.<p>Be honest with yourself and your partner about this. If you give in just to keep your partner (for whom having kids may be a deal breaker), you&#x27;re going to make your life, your partner&#x27;s life and your children&#x27;s life miserable.<p>It&#x27;s OK not to do it.

I turned 43 today. Maybe I&#x27;m wrong and actually wiser than I think, but realistically, just about any advice I would give a person today is heavily colored by whatever I happen to be doing right now that seems to be working. The biggest thing I&#x27;ve learned is that I keep changing my mind about everything and the best way I can think of to live a life right now does not agree with what I would have said 20 years ago and most likely that means it doesn&#x27;t agree with what I&#x27;ll say 20 years in the future. I guess this is why I don&#x27;t have a blog. I do write, quite a bit, items that could be blog posts, even items that could be books. But I write for myself. I don&#x27;t publish any of it, in part because I don&#x27;t have any strong evidence I&#x27;m actually correct about very much and in part because much of what I would have written 20 years ago would embarrass me today if I had published it.<p>Maybe this woman has it figured it out better than I do, but I doubt it. Do your best. Behave in a confident enough manner that people will take you seriously as an employee, spouse, friend, whatever it is. But never become too confident on the inside. No matter how certain you seem on the outside, stay humble and remain open to the possibility that you are actually wrong. I think there&#x27;s an enormous need on the part of a typical human to take a position on everything they&#x27;re aware of. Don&#x27;t give in to that. Admit to yourself what you don&#x27;t know, either because the facts don&#x27;t exist, aren&#x27;t accessible to you, or you simply don&#x27;t have the time and intellectual energy to do the research necessary to truly understand everything that might matter. Become comfortable with your own limits.

My 2 cents:<p>A) Make exercise fun - tennis, golf, hiking, skating, skiing etc.<p>B) Marriage is a piece of paper. Kids are permanent and a major source of pain or joy depending on how you raise them.<p>C) Always have a plan B for job, housing, and possibly primary relationship. You may never need it but having one makes plan A tolerable longer.<p>D) Fully fund your 401k and Roth or trad IRA(s). Let compound interest work for you.<p>E) Own whatever home you can afford to buy from tiny on up.<p>F) Reserve time every day or week for your 10000 hour activities&#x2F;skills.

This is a real mixed bag. no. 1 and 17 are great.<p>The thing on letting friends come and go, kind of.<p>There are things you&#x27;ll never know, and depths of feeling and insight you&#x27;ll never attain, unless you are capable of holding on to at least a couple friends for decades. Some friendships are backloaded like Amazon RSUs.

Life lessons from someone who has barely completed the tutorial.<p>Come back in 30-40 years, maybe.

Learn how to experience a sunset. Take time for this.

Not to be confused with.....oh wait, it is Annie Mac! The famous BBC dj&#x2F;presenter. Nice.

LIFE LESSONS FROM A 68 YEAR OLD.<p>November 30, 2023<p>1. Don’t exercise to be strong. Exercise to be healthy.<p>2. The best place for ideas is where ever works best for you.<p>3. What she said. And carry and pencil and pocket-sized notebook everywhere. People say I have a great memory. It&#x27;s a hack, not a gift.<p>4. In relationships, the most important thing is love. If you have it, no problem is too big. Without it, who cares?<p>5. If sex ever becomes hard work, become a hooker. You might as well get paid.<p>6. Consider a pet before having anything else.<p>7. At any age, if you take care of yourself, you will not experience irrational weight gain. Nothing happens out of nowhere for no reason at all. There are no rewards or punishments, only consequences.<p>8. Sometimes in life, the best thing to do, is to &lt;insert whatever works for you&gt;.<p>9. In a long term relationship, be either &quot;all in&quot; or not. If you&#x27;re &quot;all in&quot;, be &quot;all in&quot;.<p>10. Learn the difference between issues and details. Issues matter. Details don&#x27;t.<p>11. Allow aquaintances to come and go. True friendships are so rare and precious, never lose them. (I learned that the hard way too many times.)<p>12. Give every &quot;no show&quot; one opportunity to apologize. After that, ghost them. No matter what happens, it will be for the best.<p>13. Never allow anyone to &quot;make you feel&quot; anything. You must always decide how to feel yourself.<p>14. If you&#x27;re too stupid to use a condom, you get what you deserve. Unfortunately sometimes your child gets what you deserve too.<p>15. The more you know, the lower the percentage of everything there is to know will be known by you.<p>16. Don&#x27;t pick the phone up in the first place. (There, you just eliminated the need for 4,528 &quot;put your phone down&quot; rules.<p>17. See #14, #15, and #16.<p>18. See #16. See how easy.<p>19. Apply #16 to social media. Except Hacker News.<p>20. If you&#x27;re older than the author of a listicle, you have automatic permission to build upon it with your own listicle.<p>OP, thanks for the nice list, and the opportunity to play along with good clean fun. :-)

&gt; . In your mid forties, you will experience irrational weight gain. Out of nowhere, for no reason at all, a spare tyre of flesh will arrive around your waist.<p>Perhaps is author is talking about the effects of (pre) menopause but men can <i>easily</i> avoid this by replacing carb with protein and lifting weights. You just have adjust your lifestyle as you age.