Growing up in Pennsylvania during the 50s the ideal life was to work until you were in your 60s and then retire to Florida and play golf for the rest of your life. That seems dumb to me now. Sure I like playing golf but I’m pretty mediocre at it. I also feel I’m great at my job and I love doing it. So why would I want to leave something I’m good at and spend the rest of my life doing something I’m just mediocre at? My advice is to find something you love to do and you never have to worry about retirement.

If you find something you love doing, you never have to retire. Retirement is an idea from the Industrial Age when most jobs were in factories or transportation and required a lot of muscle power. By the time you were 60 or 65 it was physically impossible to do most of those jobs anymore. But now we are out of the industrial age and into a service and information based economy. Muscle power is no longer the main requirement, it’s brain power that’s needed and those skills we can use forever.

Also, I think a lot of the problems of aging can be solved by finding work you really want to do. Contributing to society must be one of the main reasons why we are on earth. I can’t imagine that if there is some big master plan for life, the top of the chart doesn’t say, “Sit On The Beach Your Whole Life.” Why are we here if we are not helping someone else? Sitting on your butt watching the weather channel and playing mediocre golf doesn’t sound like a whole lot of contribution.

If you find work you love you will want to do it forever and most of the problems of aging will go way. You won’t have to worry about how much money you have to retire because you’ll keep on working forever. You won’t be yelling at the TV news everyday about how the rest of the world is so stupid and you have everything figured out, because you will still be trying to put your ideas into action. And a lot of the aches and pains of old age will go away because you will have something bigger than yourself to worry about. You will be concentrating on getting up in the morning to go and do the things you love doing and feeling important because you are still needed and wanted in the world. We are not just here to fill up a doctor’s waiting room.

Every organization that you come into contact with in life seems to want to stomp out what is best about you. If you have a knack for cracking jokes in a room full of people, you’ll face as least 12 years of teachers who will try to beat it out of you. If you have a talent for seeing how to solve problems differently or if you like to wear different clothes, every boss you ever have will likely create a culture that will make you feel uncomfortable.

I remember when I was in school. I had ants in my pants. I couldn’t sit still in class. I was always jumping around trying to make a fool out of myself and get a laugh. If I was a kid today they probably would have given me Ritalin. The teachers were always beating on me to sit down and be quiet. I was good at having ants in my pants. And it took until I was in my 40s to realize that I could make a whole lot of money jumping around TV shows selling books. For my first 10 years of acting like a fool jumping around on TV, my parents did not admit I was their kid. But it worked. It sold books and I loved doing it. I was good at it. And I make a boat load of money doing it. If someone said this was my good part and helped me develop the talent I was born with, I would not have wasted 40 years getting around to profiting from it.

So look into yourself, your kids or your loved ones, and try to discover the weird things about you and develop it to the fullest. Quit trying to be like everyone else. Other people are doing that better than you if it comes natural to them. What is weird about you, you will do better than anyone else in the world because it will come natural to you. We are all attracted to different. So show the world what is different about you, and you will be loved for it. No one is going to love you for being the same as everyone else, and anyway you’re not.

Walking around in question mark suits made me finally feel that I am living inside out. I am finally showing the world what I feel like inside of me. Our culture seems to want all of us to cover up what is inside of us. Why?

Many of us are sitting in jobs that we dislike and fear leaving to look for something else or to start your own business. Why does staying with something we hate stop us from trying something we may love for the rest of our lives? I always try to ask myself, “What is the worst that can happen if I leave?” And the answer I would come up with is that I can always find another job I hate, and you can too. There are plenty of them around.

No one likes to ask for bad things to happen in their life. But many times the bad things create the best opportunities in life. Being fired from a job you didn’t like is a blessing in disguise. You probably never would have left it by yourself because you didn’t know exactly what you wanted to do. Being fired is probably the best thing your boss can ever do for you. Then you have no excuse but to go out and find something you really want to do in life.

The older I get the more I see that there is good in almost everything bad that happens. The Vietnam War and the military draft were going on when I graduated from college. I tried to get a deferment by going to graduate school. But my grades and test scores were so bad no school would have me. I joined the Navy to avoid being drafted into the Army and I’ll tell you, I never had more responsibility again for the rest of my life. It turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life and I was trying to get out of it. As a 22 year-old kid out of college, the Navy gave me billion dollar ships to drive around the South China Seas. They gave me big guns to shoot, and made me a diplomatic currier traveling the world.

I have two failed marriages and I found divorce to be the most hurtful experience I have ever had. But without the experience of divorce I would have never thought through how much work a relationship really takes and what are the most important elements required for finding someone you can be compatible with in order to raise a family.

I already talked about having 2 failing businesses was the only way I could have found out what I really wanted to do in life.

And even recently, I relearned this important lesson again when a government consumer protection agency accused me of making false statements in my commercials. They did this even though they had no consumer complaints against me and they were not investigating me. It was just some kind of political thing because they saw me promoting government programs. It was still a kick in the gut. But when I decided to fight back on their false acquisitions I learned that I know more about government programs than even the government. And I am now stronger to fend off anyone else who has something bad to say about what I am doing. I can now be even bolder in my efforts to educate people about government programs, because my fight has reassured me of my knowledge and made me stronger in my convictions. I should now thank them for the wake up call.

Mathew Lesko's thoughts on Life.

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