#1 Lifestyle Mistake to Avoid in Your 20's

Course-Correct with Extreme Urgency!

There’s a sense in your late teens, early twenties, that the world is opening up before you and you can be what the hell ever you decide to be — along with this is your awareness that the people you always expected to be with you, have left.

These two, compounded, create an energy that can be dangerous.

There’s also the sense in our culture, that this energy is what we want of youth. That good, cool, interesting, worthwhile, sexy people are energetic and distinct, defined and moving fast towards their own personal nirvana like a meteor.

But as you get older, you realize that that nirvana is a mirage — an image of yourself you’ve made up, to show off, to combat your fear of meaninglessness, to try and belong to something, a kingdom to be king of that maybe never existed and never will.

Qualities of thoughtfulness, loyalty, responsibility, and kindness are thrown under the runaway wagon of the need to prove yourself.

At the age of 18 people are thinking it’s too late for them to really get their stuff together and be someone — by 25 you can feel like a veteran clinging onto the over ripe promises of youth.

And this pressure leads people to make false steps — steps that cost them a lot later on, to places from which they have to backtrack years later. Expecially when pride, rivalry and competition get’s in the mix — people force each other out on their personal crusades, everyone becomes more extreme and alienated, and years later, you think it might have been better if you’d just taken it easy and moved slowly.

But fools rush in. Here’s a lifestyle mistake to avoid with extreme urgency.

The #1 Lifestyle Mistake

Craig did okay at school. He was the sports Captain, and he was always friendly with the Manager. These two facts went together. It became his thing in life to attach himself to someone who was in a position to give him responsibility, power, money, or status. It started at school when he was the best friend of a ‘cool kid’ and visually turned into a copy of the cool kid; same hair, same clothes, same things coming out of his mouth. This elevated him to a position of ‘coolness’ in school which he used to get the prettiest girlfriends, a wider range of friends-

It surprised people that soon after school the apprentice turned on the master and dropped him flat having found a new master. After school, ‘coolness’ was pretty much useless and this new master was the manager of a company and lived in the Tropics for half the year of a boat. Craig served him as he had served the ‘cool kid’ — he went above and beyond in showing great depth of friendship and loyalty until he really had his new master’s heart in his hand. He picked him up from airports, he cleaned his house while he was away, he visited his nephews and gave them presents — stuff that a lover would do. And he became assistant manager in the company. They traveled around together in his boat. He got prettier girlfriends and more money. They rented a house in a great location and threw parties.

By 25 the world was at his feet — he had much more money than any of his old school friends, he had some power and responsibility and he was securely protected by his relationship with his master.

A few years later he met, in this company, the niece of the company owner — a billionaire — and he courted her devotedly. He took her to the tropics, played her all the love songs the cool kid at school had put in mix tapes, used every resource he had to win her away from her marriage. She divorced and moved in with him and they used their combined money and experience to set up a company — now with her financial resources and her higher social position — he was able to aim even higher. When they were out, he would lavish his love and attention on her like the devoted lover he had always been.

He bought her endless presents, met her at times and places that showed his devotion; her bed was regularly strewn with rose petals. And he became the owner and manager of his own company- a company that did the same thing as his now uncle-in-law’s successful business. He was bound to succeed surely. He didn’t have time for the lowly manager and his dysfunctional life torn between England and the Tropics, let alone for the cool kid and his self-indulgent dreams — he, and his new wife, were entrepreneurs conquering the world.

Except all through life, he’d piggy-backed on other people. That was his strategy. Follow other people, absorb what they had to offer, in terms of status, by offering love abundantly, and then move on to ahigher type of person.

The company didn’t make a lot of money. After about a decade of trying they gave up on it. Pretty soon after, their marriage broke down and they separated. Nearing 40, he had to find a job without much training, or any purpose of his own.

If the company had been successful the pattern suggests that he would find another person to be his master and guru and aimed through their resources and identity to become even more successful.

The big mistake: he didn’t work on himself. or figure out his values. He tried to use people like stepping stones. People will appreciate your love and attention, they will pay you back with what they can, but ultimately you have to work on yourself.

‘We live, as we dream, alone.’ Joseph Conrad

Everyone follows their own course. No matter how much you give to people, they’ll never be responsible for you, or obligated to you — if their natural motion takes you in a different way, they go that way; the only person who is going to look after you is you.

All the time he was kind and generous to people. He never took more than he gave in terms of time and effort — but in terms of money and status, he always looked to relationships to build them for him.

With this approach you end up alone and helpless — still trying the same trick as when you were twenty but no longer able to do it. And the people who should be your friends and lovers have gone because you tried to use people for your own gain.

He would have been better finding something he really cared about and working humbly for it, building small, and slowly getting somewhere, rather than aiming big, fast by using people.