I read this article on Lifehack.org this morning, and this may be the early morning caffeine rush speaking, but I found it to be fairly insightful. It’s written by Adrian Savage, a retired business executive, and it lists fifteen life lessons he wishes he’d known in his youth. It’s all common sense really, and it borderlines on ’self-help’, but I enjoyed it.

Here are my favourite points:

• Waiting to do something until you can be sure of doing it exactly right means waiting for ever. One of the greatest advantages anyone can have is the willingness to make a fool of themselves publicly and often. There’s no better way to learn and develop. Heck, it’s fun too.
• The quickest and simplest way to wreck any relationship is to listen to gossip. The worst way to spend your time is spreading more. People who spread gossip are the plague-carriers of our day. Cockroaches are clean, kindly creatures in comparison.
• You can rarely, if ever, please, placate, change, or mollify an asshole. The best thing you can do is stay away from every one you encounter. Being an asshole is a contagious disease. The more time you spend around one, the more likely you are to catch it and become one too.
• The loudest noise in the world is the sound of people whining. Don’t add to it.

The point that really rung true with me is the first one I listed above. I spent most of my ‘transition to adulthood’ waiting. I spent my time in elementary school waiting for high school, my high school years waiting for university, and my university years waiting for working life. I held back on relationships, hobbies, and goals, thinking I’d be better equipped to enjoy them at the next stage in life. I think if there’s one thing I wish I’d known when I was younger, it would be to enjoy your life as it is instead of what it will be.

I look back at how together I thought I was when I was a teenager, and how not-at-all together I turned out to be, and I can’t help but wonder what I’ll think of my current self in ten years time. Maybe the best way to judge how you’re advancing in life is by how big of an idiot you think you were five years ago?