So many people hang around doing a job, or even stay in a relationship, they dislike because they are waiting to identify the perfect job or person to jump to before they leave the imperfect one. The problem with this is that you may not live long enough for this strategy to work. The perfect job or person is unlikely to come and hit us in the head while we are in a place we know we should not be. You have a moral obligation to get away from what you know for sure is bad even if you have no idea where you are going to go.

You don’t even have to be certain that your next step will be any better than the last one. But you still have a responsibility to leave what you positively know is not for you. That is the only way you can offer life a chance to present you with what you really should be doing. Being in the wrong place is like being in jail. Get out of there no matter what and give yourself a chance for perfect.

It is puzzling to me why so many people think that the ultimate in life is to sit on the beach and rest. They must hate their jobs. Doing nothing may seem nice for awhile, but it gets pretty boring in short order if you have something in life that you feel is important to do. Once you find what you are dying to do, sitting on the beach seems like a waste of time. You can rest for eternity when you are dead. So why do it now, when there are so many fun things to do?

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been known to sit on my butt doing much of nothing. But things like resting, having a family, and living a full life are indeed important to me in that they also help my main mission in life and that is trying to contribute as much to someone else’s life as I can before it’s over.

The problem with aging is that the body does not work as well as it used to, and so we think we are missing out on pleasures of life that we once appreciated. But I think what really happens is that there are new pleasures that present themselves that we don’t even realize exist. It seems to be a pattern throughout life.

We certainly didn’t enjoy the same activities in high school as we did in kindergarten, so why should we think that we have to enjoy all of the same things in our 50s in the same way we enjoyed them in our 20s. By taking a pill to enjoy an experience the same way we did 30 years ago is missing out on exploring a deeper and more meaningful way to enjoy the experience. You don’t want to act like a kindergarten kid when you are in high school.

I hope by now you know that I’m talking about love. Because I find it can be an experience that can grow deeper and more meaningful with age, especially when you don’t have to react like a teenager anymore. It’s a lovely experience that can be developed forever. I only wish I was able to take it more seriously when I was younger.

So don’t give up on learning how to love. Unlike sports and a lot of life’s other pleasures, it’s one activity that can provide you with rewards forever.

All the tools you need seem to be available for you to do anything you want in our society. Look at any of my books. They show you where society is giving out over $1 trillion a year for people to solve their problems and to do fun stuff. We live in a bountiful society that has so much to offer those who are willing to put in the time to search for it. I think that not having the tools is not what stops people, it’s trying to follow some stupid rules that have been put into their head for no reason at all.

It was like that for me. I used to believe that I couldn’t write a book not just because I didn’t go to a prestigious college, but more importantly because I flunked English in college and graduated, just barely, with a 3.0000001 average. Three point zero was passing. But I now have over 100 books to my name and two have been on the New York Times Best Seller lists. In this country you can forget all the silly little rules people put in your head. The tools are out there for everyone to use. Is this a great country or what?

Whether it’s filling out a grant application for yourself or preparing a new marketing strategy for your business, we all love to think about what we are going to do once we get the grant, or once the millions of sales come in from the marketing plan. I used to do that too. But now I don’t waste the time because I realize that success in anything is a nice problem to have and you should only worry about it once it happens. Reality in life is that 9 out of 10 attempts at anything usually fail. I’ve written over 100 books but only about 10 or 15 have sold enough copies to be proud of. But before each book was published I would swear that each was going to be on the cover of Time Magazine. So if failure is likely to happen 90% of the time, I might as well gear my life around it and plan for failure, because if I’m wrong, that will be wonderful.

The way I plan for my books failing is to always have a few extra book ideas that I would like to do if I had the time. This way when a book fails I don’t have to spend too much time wallowing in self pity over my failure because I will have another idea that I can get working on right away that I can now be positive will make it to Time Magazine.

It seems to me that money is best spent by continually investing in yourself so that you have a better future. And if you’re so old or rich that you don’t need to worry about your future anymore, your money should be spent investing in someone else’s future.

The money you spend on a cruise or even investing in the stock market can be put to better use in your life by investing in your education, your own business, or a place to live. If you can do both the cruise and the education that would be great. But most of us don’t have that luxury. Choosing the long-term gain will always better serve you and your family. Investing in the stock market or similar investment scheme can be a fool’s game. Why invest in something you have very little knowledge of and very little control over. Plus you are giving your money to a stock broker who will be having all the fun with it while you have all the worry. The best investment is always in yourself. That is the one thing you have the most knowledge of and the most control over.

Mathew Lesko's thoughts on Life.

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