#73 - Advice to my younger self, stories from the last 12 years.

Hans Chan -

What I’m Reading

What’s Happening with the Economy? The Great Wealth Transfer article by Ray Dalio shines a light on the situation we now face in this post-COVID era. Despite headlines going on about the cost of living crisis, in reality, there was a huge shift in wealth from the government and central banks to the private sector (households and businesses). This is the reason why despite the aggressive base rate rises, inflation remains high. So the result is households' income statements are good on the whole while the government’s is in bad shape.

Definitely worth a read as Dalio goes into detail about what to expect next as well as the current situation.

Resource of the week

My sister is a green tea aficionado, and as a green tea lover myself I get to benefit from her latest discoveries. Short of going to Japan, she has given the thumbs up to Clear Spring’s Sencha and Matcha green teas. I would recommend too, if done right, it doesn’t leave any bitter aftertaste.

If you want to go all out you can also purchase Itoen green teas which the Japan centre imports, it’s sublime.

Quote

"The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read."

Mark Twain

Thoughts

I often think about what advice I would give to my younger self. If I look back at the last 12 or 14 years of my life, I would say one overarching theme was feeling lost for a lot of it. Especially in the first half. So what are some lessons I’ve learned from my experiences?

  1. Not rushing to marry the first person I dated.

For the record, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people marrying their high school sweethearts but it certainly was the wrong thing to do especially as I didn’t know myself very well and it was very rushed, we ended up living together not much more than a month after we met. Thankfully we never had children and went our separate ways after 7 years.

There was always a niggling doubt when she brought up that we should get married but I thought it would go away, but it never did. Ignoring issues always seem to get worse over time.

2. Things take longer than expected.

I tried a lot of ventures to try to make money when I was younger, which in itself isn’t a bad thing. I would recommend trying lots of things to myself if I was to do it all over again, but just in a different way. Being adventurous and taking acceptable risks is important when you’re young. However, the issue was I would always look to take shortcuts. I remember an early one was blowing £2k or £3k on a scammy Forex course after going to one of these free ‘seminars’ at a fancy hotel after they promised I would be generating incredible riches if I bought their system. It stung as it took me a long time to save up.

I started an Amazon FBA business, which in fairness did ok as I had some items reach #1 on the bestseller list, but ended up fizzling out as I wasn’t thinking about building something long-term and sustainable. Instead, I was using little tricks and hacks, hopping from one trend to the next.

Everything I am proud of having achieved so far took a long time or a thousand consistent steps over and over.

I understand the appeal of wanting to achieve quick results, who doesn’t, it’s only natural, but anything ever worth achieving doesn’t come quickly, I wish I knew this sooner. The time will pass anyway best make the most of it, even if it seems a long time away. People always say for example 5 years in the future is a long time to commit to something. But 5 years ago was 2018, the same year when Prince Harry married Meghan Markle which doesn't seem that long at all. You can achieve a lot in 5 years if you stay consistent.

3. Being less goal-oriented.

This might come as a bit of a surprise, but I don’t think hyper-fixating on goals do much good. I do have goals to this day, but they are more to give me direction than anything. It’s much more important to learn to enjoy the process. It boils down to being consistent and taking action every single day, after all, what we spend our days doing is what we spend our lives doing. So make sure it’s something worthwhile

4. Don’t give up on yourself.

Another one of my master plans to become a billionaire was to sign up for a coaching franchise programme. Long story short, I got scammed for another £3k. I felt so silly and lost, and had no more motivation. I proceeded to spend all of my spare time solo playing League of Legends (for those that don’t know about it, it’s best to keep it that way, it’s the most toxic game known to mankind). I didn’t care I wasting time, I just gave up. I did this for months.

We all fail, it’s just a normal part of life. I don’t know any successful person that has never failed before. The key is to fail quickly and pick yourself back up and carry on. No complaints.

5. What’s the end game here

This is why I still have loose goals to give some direction. One day I asked myself this question when I was solo grinding LoL. I just extrapolated forward where I would be if I just kept playing games all day long. The answer was nowhere. So I just stopped one day picked myself up, went back to the gym for the first time in years and haven’t looked back. Whenever I catch myself doing something a lot I ask myself what the end game is, if I don’t like the answer I like to cut it out.

I have to say, reminiscing through some of my past mistakes has been sobering, but I hope at least some of this resonated with you and is helpful. Let me know what you think or if you have any feedback, just hit reply. Have a good week!

Hans