Life Lessons: Essential Knowledge for Personal Growth

Nutrition is the foundation for a healthier, happier life, influencing mental and physical well-being.

### Life Lessons: 10 Essential Insights for Personal Growth
* 🌅 Many people wake up feeling **lost and unsure about their purpose in life**, realizing they need to **do more** but lacking the knowledge on **how to achieve it**.
* 🥗 The first crucial lesson is the **importance of nutrition**; neglecting it in your 20s can lead to **years of health issues, stress, and mental anguish**.
* 💼 Secondly, it's vital to understand that your employer may not prioritize your well-being, as they often only care about **keeping you productive and comfortable enough not to leave**.
* 💰 The third lesson emphasizes **investing in your future**, such as buying rental properties, which can **significantly ease financial burdens** and **build wealth over time**.
* 🚀 Taking risks early in life is the fourth point, as it becomes **increasingly difficult to recover from failures as you age**, making it essential to **embrace opportunities while you have time on your side**.
* 🍻 The fifth lesson is about the bars always being open; spending money on nightlife can **derail financial stability**, and investing that money instead can lead to **substantial wealth over time**.
* 💖 The sixth insight stresses that you **don't owe anyone an explanation or validation** for your choices, allowing you to focus on **building a meaningful future** for yourself and your family.
* 🧠 Finally, the tenth lesson is to **remain teachable**; acknowledging that there is **always more to learn** will lead to **personal growth and happiness** through gratitude.

you know how often you wake up in the morning and you don't know. You feel lost. You don't know what your direction, what your destiny, or your purpose in life is. You don't know how to figure it out. You have no way to. You don't know how to educate yourself. You know that you're destined for more. You know that you need and you should do more. You just don't know how. Today, I'm going to go over 10 things that I wish I would have learned in my 20s. I wish somebody would have taught me, and in all honesty, this goes for everybody at every age. It doesn't matter. We can all benefit from it. It's life lessons that I've learned now that I'm 45, and I wish I wish like hell I would have learned this 20, 25 years ago. Now, even though I have these things, not these, even though these are numbered, I don't actually have them in any real order of priority except for the first one, and that's

nutrition. When I was in my 20s, I didn't give a about my nutrition. I'd say mid-20s especially. I was always stressed. My cortisol levels were through the roof. I worked at kajil in hours, and I completely neglected my nutrition. Hello, hey. I knew better, but I didn't give a damn. I was 20. I was indestructible. Now that I'm in my 45, I know the air in my ways. After I got out of the military, I put on about 80 lbs over the course of a year. I did good for a while, but the amount of stress that I was under between my job and a business that had failed, which I'll actually get into later, I let everything just go to complete. And now that I'm 45, I know the importance of proper nutrition. I understand the importance of it. It would have saved me years of depression, anxiety, weight gain. I could have maintained the physique that I once had when in my younger years.

would have saved me years of mental anguish. The number one priority, the number one thing that we should all pay attention to, is our nutrition. Without it, you don't have anything. The second thing, number two, your employer doesn't give a f*** about you. Your employer only gives a f*** about you and is only willing to pay you just enough so that you don't leave, and to keep you productive to where you feel comfortable, to where you feel like you can't leave, you feel stuck, you're trapped, and no more. When I was about 25 years old, I put everything on the back burner, and I sacrificed my physical mind, my body, my health for a boss. Hello. I sacrificed everything for an employer that could give a f*** about me. I hurt my back, I herniated three discs in my lower back. At that point, I learned that I was replaceable, I was expendable, I was not important, I was a liability to my employer. Over the last 20 years, I've

reinjured my back several times. I just reinjured my back a couple of weeks ago. I had to take two weeks off from work about maybe 3 weeks ago. Couldn't hardly walk. Hello, hello. Couldn't stand up straight. And where's my employer from 20 years ago? You think they give a about me? You think they give a about my back hurting me 20 years later? They don't care. It means absolutely nothing to them. And now my current employer and I are left with an end result. And I gave everything I had to that employer, and I will never do it again. Your health is the most important thing. It's all you got. That's all. That's it. The number three thing I want to talk about is investing your money in your future. Investing in the stock market, buying that rental property, and house hacking. You go buy that, uh, go buy that fourplex, and you live in one of them. You rent the other three out. You come up with enough of a down payment to where you don't have to worry about

paying the entire mortgage yourself. If you do that before you get into a relationship, it's going to be a thing. It's going to make things a hell of a lot easier. You don't want your wife to have to live in an apartment complex if you can avoid it. You don't want your kid to grow up in an apartment complex if you can avoid it. I've lived in them, but it just makes life that much easier when you avoid that situation. If you're able to do it before you settle down and you start getting serious about establishing a marriage, establishing your future, you're going to thank yourself in the future because you're going to be able to gain off of owning a property, owning a future rental property. That rental property is going to gain you money in every way. The property is going to appreciate, and somebody else is going to pay it down for you. And while you're living there, while you're living there, somebody's paying it off for you. There's no way. Somebody's paying it off for you, and you're able to

save the money and not pay rent yourself. You're able to not have to worry about covering the mortgage. You're able to not have to worry about any of it, and you're able to invest even more money into your future, into more real estate, into more, put more money in the stock market, take care of your future better. You're able to house hack, and you're able to become extremely wealthy off of virtually nothing. The shitty part about that is I actually know a guy that did exactly that. God only knows what he's worth nowadays. He started out cleaning up people's dog in their backyard. He rode his bicycle to work every day so that he didn't have to pay for the car. He kept his bills to an absolute minimum, and now he's hands down the wealthiest person I know, hands down multi-DEA millionaire, and he will never have to worry about money for the rest of his life because in his early 20s he got started, and he did everything the right way. I was stupid, and I didn't.

think that I would be able to pull that off. He would have absolutely taught me everything he knows. He probably still would if I wanted to. But instead, I was listening to people that had no idea what to do with their money, and I wasted all of mine. That leads into the fourth thing, and it goes right with number three, and that's take your risks early. The earlier you can set yourself up, the easier it is to overcome because you have time on your side. Say you go and buy that fourplex, or you buy that just regular house, and you decide to rent the rooms out to your friends or Perfect Stranger. You go house hacking. If for whatever reason you had to move back into mom and dad, you weren't able to cover the bills anymore. If that house, if that situation went bad, if it went South, you're able to recover from that. But as you get older, your mom and dad, you can't really move back in with them. They might be getting, they might

pass away, but as you get older, it's harder. It's harder to recover from those potential risks. You don't have the compound interest on your side because you don't have the time. Mom and dad might be deceased. They might have passed away when you're in your 20s, and you just, you first move out. It's going to be a hell of a lot easier when everything goes south. Go back to mom and dad. There's no shame in that. Dust yourself off and then start again. Do it all over again. Figure out where you went wrong and do it. Find those risks. Figure that out. You can do it, especially if you're in your 20s. But the risk, the amount of risk that's involved, it does nothing but going up. It gets more and more every single year as you get older. Number five, the fifth thing I want to number five on that list is the bars are always going to be open, and your friends are always going to be there. You can go

to that bar, and you can go hang out with your friend anytime you want. When you go to a bar, how much money do you spend? Can you even go to a bar anymore for less than 100 bucks? And then you see people that are going out there, and they're charging that on their credit card. They're going over there, and they're running up a $100 tab. They're getting shitfaced every single weekend: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Just constantly getting shitfaced. Think about all that money that you're throwing right in the toilet. If you spend 100 bucks a weekend, $400 a month, if you were to just invest that in a simple Index Fund every month from the age of 20 to 50, you'd have right around $2 million on average. Let's say I was half wrong about that. Let's say I was half wrong with a 2 million bucks, and you only end up with a million. How much better are you going to be when you turn 50 years old with a million?

dollars in your bank account because you made it. You decide to make the smart choices at your younger years. Alcohol is poison, the bars are poison, and saying no to your friends, saying no to the bar, all it's going to do is help you in the future. It's only going to benefit you in the future. I know that feeling that going drinking, it helps you loosen up, it helps you feel better, but that's only a symptom of the problem. Hello, the problem is your insecurities. Those insecurities are deep down inside of you, and you need to figure out how to overcome those insecurities 'cause all you're doing is making them worse. Now you're a drunk with insecurities instead of just being a normal person with normal insecurities that everybody has. Say no to your friends, stop going to the bars. Number six, you don't have anything to prove to anyone, and you don't owe anybody anything. You don't have to give anybody any explanations. You don't have to prove anything to anybody ever. That person

that thinks that you're full of because you're trying to make strides. You're trying to get ahead in life. You're trying to do something to benefit your future, to benefit your family in the future. Screw that. You don't owe him anything, and you don't need his validation. You don't owe anybody anything. So far, you fixed your nutrition, you're investing in yourself, you don't have any debt, you're investing in your future. You don't owe anybody anything, you're not going to the bars, and you're making all the right moves. You want to focus on a family, you want to focus on passing on a legacy, you want to focus on being able to create a legacy, and you're able to do that because the first steps that you're taking with responsibility in your life are going to allow you the opportunity to do that. You meet the girl of your dreams, you guys decide to have kids. That leads us to the seventh thing that I wish I would have known, and that

was to create more memories and put less focus on stuff and more focus on memories. As you get older, life goes faster, life passes as you buy faster. Think back to when you were a freshman and you're sitting in high school and you were thinking to yourself, All you have is four more years. It's going to take forever for you to finish school. You don't know if you're ever going to be able to finish school. It feels like it's never going to end. And it seems like the next thing you know, you blink and you're done. You're in your senior year and then your senior year is over and now life just started getting real. You have to start adulting. You have to start doing things that are hard, making decisions that are hard. You have to take responsibility for your actions. There's consequences to your actions. You're now an adult. When you have kids and you get married, you only have 18 summers with those kids and it goes by fast. There's actually a mathematical

equation somebody way smarter than me. I couldn't tell it to you, but you can look it up. There is a mathematical equation that actually breaks down and proves that the older you get, the faster your life goes. It's not just theory; it is fact. Before you know it, the days are long and the decades are short. Make those memories. But since you've been a good steward with all of your money, you're not going to the bars. You're focusing on your future. You're in a great relationship with your wife. You've got kids or you've got kids on the way. You're establishing yourself. You're building yourself up and doing the right thing. You're going to end up putting less stress on your marriage. You're going to put less stress in your household 'cause you're not worried about what the boys are doing anymore. You're not worried about the car payment and finances. You're not worried about how you're going to keep the lights on. You don't give a about that anymore.

because you've been doing. You have been taking the proper steps that a responsible adult should be taking. You're going to find that your marriage can be more successful and happier. You don't give a about the stuff, even if you can't afford the car or whatever. You can afford the payment. That's no way to live. That will sneak up on you before you know it. Here come the fights about finances. That will happen if you're not a good steward with your money. And if you just delay that gratification until later on in your life, you will be able to afford anything you want and truly be able to. And there won't be any stress involved with it. And you'll truly be able to afford and enjoy whatever it is that you want to enjoy. That badass car that you've been wanting your whole life, it's not going to bring stress into your house. It's not going to bring negativity into your life because you can actually afford it. The eth thing you've been a

good steward with your money. You've established yourself, and you've taken tons of risk, and you've gotten it out of the way. You've been able to recover from failure if you need to. You're able to have a happy marriage, a happy household. You're able to accomplish whatever it is that you want. Your confidence is up because you're keeping your nutrition, and you've done things in the right steps. You've done things the right way in order for you to be able to get to the point that you're at now. When I was in my 20s, any of you guys that have been with me for a while, you know that I used to be a plumber. At the time, I was doing construction. I went and got my contractor's license. I formed an LLC, and I started a plumbing business. I knew how to do the service-type work, but what I really knew was the construction. What I found out is there isn't any money in construction, especially in 2007-2008 when the real

estate market was collapsing, and I was facing multiple layoffs in one year. My business failed. I didn't realize that the money in the plumbing industry was in service. I thought it was in construction. All the people that I'd worked for were all multi-millionaires. They had everything going on. They had more money than they knew what to do with. But the only way that people make money in construction is by volume, and it's an extremely difficult market to actually be able to break into, be successful, and make money at it. Just because you're a good plumber doesn't mean that you're a good business owner. But what I did wrong, the reason why my business failed, was because I was scared to go big. I did things right as far as I established an LLC, I had my contractor's license, I was insured, I was bonded, I had everything done properly to the tee. But what I didn't realize is what hurt me. What I didn't realize is why my

business failed. Now back when back then in 2008, 2007, I was based out of the Phoenix area. And back then, the way to get your business booming, the way to get plenty of customers to come in in the service industry, was to have a Yellow Pages ad in the phone book. Now I was a new, I was just starting out, and I didn't have any way, I didn't have any word of mouth. I didn't know how else to get my word out, to get word out there. Remember, Google was in its infancy. YouTube was just started. Facebook wasn't even a thing. There was, you either had TV commercials or the phone book, and that's about it, or a word of mouth. When you're just starting, it's difficult to get that word of mouth. But in the Phoenix area, in order to put a full-page ad in the phone book, in the Yellow Pages, it was $28,000 a month. Not 2,800, 28,000 a month. I was scared. I was scared to go too big. I

was afraid that I wouldn't be able to cover the $28,000, and that fear is what held me back. And that fear, that fear, that fear is what held me back, and that fear is why I failed. I ended up spending $10,000 a month on a half-page ad. The best month that I had there was $330,000. Everything was going good for a little while until it wasn't. And what I found out is since I did everything right, since I established everything the right way, and I did things the proper way, since I had an LLC, I had nothing to fear. And I should have just gone big from the word go. Now, a bit of a recap: you've got your nutrition squared away, you've invested in your future, you've been a good steward with your money, you stayed away from debt, you invested in the stock market or real estate, you've got your life is coming for your life is going just well.

for you. You don't have a ton of stress. You find that lady that you want. You have that kid. You're living the dream life. You start your own business. Then you have to realize that life isn't about you. Life is about a bigger picture. When you have kids, you'll learn this. You'll figure this out. You'll know. You'll understand what I'm talking about when you have kids. Or if you have kids, you know what I'm talking about. At least I hope like hell you know what I'm talking about. Life is about other people and helping other people. Life is about establishing a good life for you, for the children that you brought into this Earth. Life is about taking care of that family and giving and being generous to everybody. That's how you become grateful. That's how you give back to humanity. That's why we're here. That's why we're put on this Earth. That's why we're put on this.

planet is to give back to humanity. It's not about us. In fact, we almost have nothing to do with anything. The only thing that we have anything to do with is helping our fellow man. It's learning and understanding that is our purpose. That is our destiny. Our destiny is to bring, provide value to those around us. That's the value that you provide, is the cap that is the value that you provide to society, is what provides your wage. The more value that you provide to society, to humanity, the more money you're able to make. The less value you provide to society and humanity, the less you make minimum wage. We're put on this Earth to provide and help one another. The best thing you can do is help other people to find the gratitude in this world and in this life that we should all feel. Hello, the 10th thing that I want to talk about is be teachable. I know when I was in my 20s, I thought I had it all figured out. I thought I knew

everything. I was indestructible. I was successful. I'd been through a lot in the years prior. My teenage years and early 20s were brutal. They were downright brutal. I thought I had wisdom. I didn't think I had anything to learn. I was ignorant as hell. I was an idiot. People would try to give me advice, and I'd be like, Ah, just blow them off. Older people that most likely had wisdom. People that were definitely wiser than me when I was in my 20s. You have to be teachable. There's people in this world that have something to offer all of us. There's something that, that, there's, there's people in this world, no matter how smart you are or you think you are, there's always somebody smarter, bigger, and better than you are. We'll often overcompensate. We'll often overcompensate our ego, our arrogance, and try to pretend that it's confidence. Anybody with any sort of intelligence is going to see right through that ego, arrogance, and confidence.

complete different things. Ego is actually necessary. Arrogance is a coping mechanism, and confidence is something that you build. Don't forget, happiness only requires gratitude. That's it. If you ever want to be happy, if you're not happy in this life, if you can't find happiness, the way that you find it is through gratitude. That's all that's required to be happy, is to be grateful for what you have. Aristotle said, The more you know, the more you realize that you don't know, and you'll find that out if you're not teachable. Anyway, that's all I got for tonight, guys. I appreciate each and every one of you. I appreciate every one of you showing up. I'm absolutely grateful for every one of you that put algor room in the comments from yesterday's video. You don't know how much that means to me. That's one of the biggest compliments that you can give this guy, and I appreciate the hell out of it. I appreciate the hell out of you, and I hope you have a wonderful day.

10 Things I Wish I Knew In My 20's (Now I'm 45)

In Nutrition and In Health

Nutrition is the most important priority for overall well-being, as neglecting it can lead to years of depression, anxiety, and weight gain.

Employers are often indifferent to their employees' well-being, making individuals feel replaceable and expendable.

Investing in the future, through the stock market or real estate, is crucial for financial stability and independence.

The Benefits of Paying Off Your Mortgage Early

Paying off your mortgage before settling down can simplify life and provide financial stability for your future family.

Owning a property can generate rental income, appreciate in value, and allow for further investments.

Taking risks early in life, such as house hacking, can provide a safety net and make it easier to recover from potential setbacks.

The Cost of Drinking and the Importance of Smart Choices

Spending $100 a weekend at bars can add up to $2 million by age 50 if invested wisely.

Saying no to drinking and focusing on personal growth can lead to a better future.

Prioritizing memories over material possessions is crucial, as life passes quickly and responsibilities increase with adulthood.

The Importance of Being a Good Steward of Money

As you age, life seems to pass by faster, making it crucial to focus on building a stable future.

Being responsible with finances reduces stress in relationships and allows for a happier marriage and household.

Taking calculated risks and delaying gratification can lead to long-term success and the ability to afford and enjoy desired luxuries without added stress.

The speaker's business struggles in the late 2000s were driven by the high cost of Yellow Pages ads and fear of taking risks.

Despite initially finding success, the speaker realized too late that they should have gone bigger from the start.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of providing value to others and being generous, highlighting that our purpose is to help and support one another.

The speaker reflects on their past, acknowledging their ignorance and arrogance in their youth.

They emphasize the importance of being teachable and recognizing that there is always someone smarter or wiser.

The speaker highlights the role of gratitude in finding happiness and expresses appreciation for their audience.