Artorius Castus

Things to do when you are in your 30s:

(1) Start saving for retirement now, not later >> start making the big financial push. Save, invest, accumulate. Make it your top priority to pay down all of your debts as soon as possible. Keep an emergency fund. Stash away a portion of every paycheck into a saving account. Don’t spend frivolously. Don’t invest in anything that you don’t understand. Save early and save as much as possible.

(2) Start taking care of your health now, not later >> have more personal discipline. Sleep more. Wake up earlier. Cut down on the junk food. Drink moderately. Exercise a little. Read more. Be more punctual. Be more organized. Smile every day. Time to slow down that breakage.

(3) Don’t spend time with people who don’t treat you well >> learn how to say NO to people, activities and obligations that don’t bring value to your life. Gently let go of those who are not making your life better. Enforce stronger boundaries in your lives and dedicate your time to better people. Setting healthy boundaries is one of the most loving things that you can do for yourself or for another person. Don’t tolerate people who don’t treat you well. Period. Don’t tolerate them for financial reasons. Don’t tolerate them for emotional reasons. Don’t tolerate them for convenience sake. Don’t settle for mediocre friends, jobs, love, relationships and life. Stay away from miserable people…they will consume you, drain you. Surround yourself and only date people that make you a better version of yourself, that bring out your best parts, love and accept you for who you are. When we’re in our 20s, the world is so open to opportunities and we’re so short on experiences that we cling to the people that we meet, even if they’ve done nothing to earn our clingage. But by our 30s we’ve learned that good relationships are hard to come by, that there’s no shortage of people to meet and friends to be made, and that there’s no reason to waste our time with people who don’t help us on our life’s path.

(4) Be good to the people you care about >> make the time for those friends and family that we do decide to keep close. Appreciate those that are close to you. You can get money back and jobs back, but you can never get time back. Tragedy happens in everyone’s life, everyone’s circle of family and friends. Be the person that others can count on when it does. I think that between the 30s and the 40s is the decade when a lot of shit finally starts to happen that you might have thought never would happen to you or those you love. Parents die, spouses die, babies are still-born, friends get divorced, spouses cheat…the list goes on and on. Helping someone through these times by simply being there, listening and not judging is an honor and will deepen your relationships in ways you probably can’t yet imagine.

(5) You can’t have everything. Focus on doing a few things really well >> everything in life is a trade-off. You give up one thing to get another and you can’t have it all. Accept that. Focus. You can simply get more done in your life if you focus on one thing and do it really well. Focus more. You have to accept that you cannot do everything. It’s better to focus on our primary strengths and maximize them over the course of our lifetime, work around our weaknesses than to half-ass something else.

(6) Don’t be afraid of taking risks, you can still change >> While by the age of 30s, most feel that they should have their career dialed in, it is never too late to reset. The individuals that I have seen with the biggest regrets during this decade are those that stay in something that they know are not right. It is such an easy decade to have the days turns to weeks to years, only to wake up at the 40s with a mid-life crisis for not taking action on a problem that they were aware of 10 years prior but failed to act on it. Biggest regrets that people have are almost exclusively things that they did *not* do. Live your life, don’t let it live you. Don’t be afraid of tearing it all down if you have to, you have the power to build it all back up again. Less fear. Less fear. Less fear.

(7) You must continue to grow and develop yourself >> one must continue to work to improve and to grow. The number one goal should be to try to become a better person, partner, parent, friend, colleague etc — in other words to grow as an individual. Live life with more passion. Get excited about what’s ahead every day. Stop lazing in bed on weekends. Get up and check out the nooks and crannies in your own country!

(8) Nobody (still) knows what they’re doing, get used to it >> stop assuming you can plan far ahead, stop obsessing about what is happening right now because it will change anyway, and get over the control issue about your life’s direction. Fortunately, because this is true, you can take even more chances and not lose anything; you cannot lose what you never had. Besides, most feelings of loss are in your mind anyway – few matter in the long term. Most of what you think is important now will seem to be unimportant in 10 or 20 years time and that’s OK. That’s called growth. Just try to remember to not take yourself so seriously all the time and be open to it. It’s truly liberating once you grasp the truth that things are always changing. To finish, there might be times that are really sad. Don’t dull the pain or avoid it. Sorrow is part of everyone’s lifetime and the consequence of an open and passionate heart. Honor that. Above all, be kind to yourself and others, it’s such a brilliant and beautiful ride and keeps on getting better.

(9) Invest in your family; it’s worth it >> spend more time with your folks. It’s a different relationship when you’re an adult and it’s up to you on how you redefine your interactions. They are always going to see you as their kids until the moment you can make them see you as your own man. Everyone gets old. Everyone dies. Take advantage of the time you have left to set things right and enjoy your family.

(10) Be kind to yourself, respect yourself >> be a little selfish and do something for yourself every day, something different once a month and something spectacular every year. Life is hard, so learn to love yourself now, it’s harder to learn later. Don’t sweat on the small stuff; and it’s almost all the small stuff anyway. When confronted with a perceived problem, ask yourself, ‘Is this going to matter in five years, ten years?’ If not, dwell on it for a few minutes, then let it go.