We turn 30 next year (we’re a month apart). Our lives look a lot different now than they did when we first met after graduating from college. Over the past 6.5 years, we established ourselves in our careers, purchased multiple real estate investment properties, started a side business, built a blog, changed our bodies, became personal trainers, and got married. The biggest change, however, has been much less obvious. Put simply, the things we cared about in our early twenties are very different than the things we place value on today. And it’s these internal shifts in focus that have led not only to the external changes, but most importantly, to tremendous self-growth, unwavering confidence, and a true understanding of and respect for our worth.
Here are the 7 biggest things we stopped caring about that led us to greater happiness, productivity, and growth:
Having lots of friends
It took us some time to learn that it’s not the quantity of your relationships with friends and family, but the quality that will lead to genuine satisfaction. Spending your time and energy on tons of acquaintances won’t give you the best return. True friends will build you up and give you energy, acquaintances won’t. True friends will be there when things aren’t going well, acquaintances won’t. Keep it simple and spend your precious time on the few people who deserve it.
Success and failure
If you fixate only on the probability of success or failure, you’ll never move outside of your comfort zone. That’s why so many people work the same job for their whole lives, even if it doesn’t make them happy. We spent our early twenties trying as hard as we could to avoid failure. Ironically, that was the period of time in our lives where we made the least amount of progress. Instead of focusing on potential outcomes, we started going after what excited us and gave us the best chance at helping as many people as possible. Focus on the journey, aim to do good, and take calculated risks — the outcome will work itself out.
External validation
We’re former college basketball players and had always used our athletic talent and success as the main source of our self-worth. We were in for quite the wake-up call when college basketball ended. People say that true beauty comes from within, but the same goes for true confidence. We learned the hard way that the biggest problem with external sources of confidence is that they are fleeting. And if you are constantly searching for things that will make you feel worthy, you’ll never feel like you’re worth anything. Learning to validate yourself and letting go of anything external will set you free.
How things “look”
Upon graduating from college, we learned very quickly that the “real world” is not judgement-free. What you do for work, where you live, how you look, and the car you drive are all examples of society’s success metrics. Caring too much about any of these things detracts from your ability to understand what truly makes you, you. At some point in our mid twenties, we stopped doing things to look good and started doing things to feel good. And that meant letting go of our desire to conform. For those of you who are new to our blog, check out Roy’s car in the photo below. We don’t believe that cars are valuable assets, and we’d rather use our funds to fuel our businesses and investments.
Working as hard as possible
During our first few working years, we fell into the corporate trap — the number of hours you work will yield the best output. We applied the same approach to fitness. More time in the gym and less rest days will lead to greater aesthetic payoff. With everything we did, we believed that the harder we worked, the better we would be, and the faster we would see progress. This mindset led to burnout, frustration, and ridiculously sore muscles. The problem was that we didn’t factor in the effect of diminishing returns. We grew to understand that there is a huge difference between working hard and working smart. When you work smart, you still work hard, but you leverage your strengths to become more efficient. As a result, you become better at the task at hand and have more time leftover to pursue other endeavors. We now just laugh quietly when we hear people brag about the number of hours they spend at the office.
Timelines
We spent a lot of time in our early twenties thinking about the “right age” to do certain things, like getting married, having kids, and switching jobs. One thing that has become abundantly clear to us over the past 6.5 years is that timelines are completely irrelevant. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry (John Steinbeck was on to something). Stressing about when you should or shouldn’t do things is a total waste of time. If you wait for a “perfect” time to do something, you probably won’t do much of anything. Nothing is set in stone and we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow. Without hesitation, go after the things that will make you the best and happiest version of yourself.
Fomo
We’ve learned that the fear of missing out (FOMO) is a lot worse than actually missing out on whatever you’re choosing not to do. If you operate based on fear, you’ll end up doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. And this applies to everything, not just experiences. You’ll go on trips that you really don’t want to go on, you’ll purchase material items that you really don’t need, and you’ll make life important decisions that you really don’t want to make. One of the biggest and best things we learned in our twenties has been to pursue things fearlessly. Because of this approach, we never experience the fear of missing out on anything. And if we make the wrong choice, we learn from it and adjust accordingly. If you live your life on your terms confidently and without comparison, any fear will naturally drift away.
Originally published at https://www.kimandroy.com on September 6, 2020.
