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The Seasons of Life
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The Rundown AIThis week’s newsletter is brought to you by my friends at the Rundown AI. This summer, I went for a walk for a few hours with Rowan Cheung, the founder and author of the Rundown AI, and I was impressed. Rowan shares the latest developments in the world of artificial intelligence and he blew me away with his understanding of:
If you’re interested in learning more about AI than the craziness going down over at Open AI, you need to subscribe to the Rundown AI. Life’s SeasonsYour life has seasons. When you’re in them, you often don’t see them. As you age, and look back, you start to get perspective. The benefit, is certain phases get repeated, so if you missed them the first time, you get a second go around. For most of the seasons, you’re an active participant the first time and a bystander, or less active participant, the second time, until the final season, death, where you’re both a bystander and then, in the end, a participant:
Trust me, once you cross into the Late Seasons you’ll realize the Wedding Season wasn’t as bad as you thought it was. The Formation SeasonThe first ten years are formative. Unfortunately, you don’t necessarily remember much of it. This is the Season that creates your Hardware, your subconscious hardwiring that drives your behavior. AdolescenceThis is where most of us start to work on our software. The stories you tell yourselves about what you can do, what you’re capable of and what your limits are. You also start to set the foundation of your future life with:
These first two stages are fun for most of us. Most of the cares in the world are held by our caregivers and parents. You’re able to live in a relaxed state focused on your life and desires without worrying about crazy things like:
Early AdultWell, life changes fast. All of a sudden you’re out of the nest. You’re wrapping up college, starting your career and investing in your relationships through most of your 20s. For my boys, I want this to be a decade where they really explore the world and themselves versus going straight through college and into a career, because once you’re in, it’s hard to get out and explore. Wedding SeasonYou know what I’m talking about. Each generation, the Season’s getting later, but for many, it’s still going to be your late 20s and early 30s. It feels like every summer is a wedding summer. You have multiple friends who’re getting married each month and you’re wondering how you are ever going to be able to afford another tuxedo rental or bridesmaid dress and WTF do they want you to wear fuschia anyway? Take a step back, though. Think about those weddings. Have you ever noticed the smiles on the faces of grandparents? When you’ve been through the Funeral Season and you’re in the Season of Death, seeing your next generation(s) getting married, having children, is one of the greatest things you appreciate. You’re seeing youth. You’re seeing happiness. You aren’t seeing death and decay. Next time you think of skipping a wedding, keep reading for the seasons of the second half to realize why you would want to enjoy these seasons while you can. Baby SeasonWe felt like we had our children late. Well, I guess it was late relative to past generations but early relative to current generations. My wife created a 10-year plan when we were 20 that would culminate in our first child and she was accurate to within months (no seriously, she’s that crazy a planner). We had our first son at 30. We had our second son at 33. We’re 45 now, so they’re 12 and 15, starting into Adolescence and not far from Early Adulthood. Our friends started to have babies shortly after us. Within a year actually, and it felt like we knew people having babies for the next 10+ years – a beautiful season and perhaps my favorite of them all. Though, it’s like they say, the days go by slowly and the years go by fast. The Funeral SeasonThis one’s hard. It actually makes this the hardest piece I’ve ever written. Over the last two years, I was taking a teacher certification on mindfulness and meditation and one of the modules was on grief and loss and I couldn’t relate, yet… Shortly over one year ago, I entered what I’m referencing as the Funeral Season. On my 44th birthday, I lost my uncle, my Godfather. It was sudden and came out of nowhere. It hit us all hard and it opened our eyes. My wife’s parents have ~ 14 adults between their two families and my parents have 9, which means 23 adults plus partners over the age of 70. With an average life expectancy in Canada of 81.75 years, we can expect over the next decade to lose many members of our family and it hits hard once it’s started. Over the last few weeks, I lost a close colleague at work who passed far too early from cancer. She was fit, healthy and such a positive human being. From the time she found out until she left us, was 3-1/2 months. Then, Last Night, it Hit Home HARD. We were out for dinner with some friends. We were all smiles and laughter, because life’s going so well right now for the two of us and our family and the future’s never been brighter, which I can’t wait to share with all of you in time. Out of the corner of my eye, while I was having a conversation with a friend, I saw my wife on the phone, which was strange. It got even stranger when I saw her eyes start to tear up. I didn’t know what was happening, but it was clear something was off so I switched seats with my friend and held her hand. She delivered the news we never want to hear. My father-in-law, who was on vacation in Hong Kong and China had a heart attack and passed away. He was 78, healthy and fit. We never expected it to happen. If anyone was going to beat the average, we thought it’d be him. He was such a big piece of our life and had been through all the seasons beside us. It hurts and it’s going to continue. Once you enter the season it ends when you’re on the other side and that’s a lot of family we’ll see. The Second Half – GrandparentsThis is a beautiful season. You’ve hopefully achieved your goals in life and get to step back. My mother and father-in-law, as examples, retired and sold their family restaurant when we returned to Vancouver and had our children and, over the last 15 years have been able to watch us and our children go through the seasons. They’ve had the opportunity to be primary caregivers, provide daycare, after-school care, come on family vacations and live beside us for much of that time. It’s a stage where you can enjoy your grandchildren the way you weren’t able to enjoy your own children. Often as parents, we set the rules, boundaries and are much more regimented with our children. When we’re a grandparent, we’re mellower, calmer and much happier to let our grandkids simply be themselves without trying to dictate what their future may be. To me, this is a beautiful season that I look forward to enjoying some day. The Final Season – DeathThis is it. You arrive at the final season. The longer you live, the more you see in this season. The friends and people around you start to disappear each year – they get sick and they pass away. Eventually, it comes for you. It comes for all of us, my friends. It’s why I say, enjoy the early seasons as much as you can.
TGG PodcastThis week on the Growth Guide Podcast, we talked to Mitchell Greene, a licensed clinical and sport psychologist, about his book, Courage over Confidence: Managing Mind Chatter and Winning the Mental Game. With courage over confidence, good players can become great competitors. The one that that gets in our way is ourselves. If we can learn how to deal with our mind chatter, we can change our lives. In this episode we talk about:
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