Edition 516 – 25 Summers

Summer has officially wrapped up for the year, though the heat and humidity has lingered into March, as it always does. It’s generally around the week of my birthday, the 26th of this month, that climatically, I feel the change. The evenings turn cooler, just as the early leaves shift from brilliant green to autumnal red and brown.

In the lead up to this past summer, in the early days of Spring last year, I’d been doing some research around life expectancy, for an upcoming edition of Contemplation, my infrequent mini-book series.

The average Australian male lives until 82 these days – a phenomenal increase of 10 years, in the past 50, and 30 years in the past 130 years. As I’m reading these statistics, I’m 57, so the thought enters my heads, that’s 25 years “left” so to speak.

Or, 25 summers!

This is not to sound morbid or morose, but when you stop and think for a moment, how far you’ve come and potentially, how far you have left in this journey of life, it crystallises many thoughts. Invariably, some of those thoughts extend to those around you, how they’re living their lives and how you can see they keep complaining about the same things, or making the same mistakes, or living their life on constant repeat, rather than savouring what’s truly out there.

If you do work in your business that you don’t like to do, then stop it.

If you have people in your life that suck the oxygen from the room, step away.

If there are things you’ve always wanted to try, but held off to this point, then do them.

Places you’ve long wanted to visit – book the trip.

Only you can change your business, and hence, your life. Too many small and family business owners like to point the finger at external factors for why their business, and hence their life, isn’t so great. Yet, I’ve been at this game close to 40 years now and I can honestly say, it’s you, your mindset and your outlook on life that has the biggest impact on your level of success in business. Nothing else! No one else!

On a recent short trip to the Hunter Valley to visit our youngest son, my wife and I diverted via Avoca Beach on the New South Wales Central Coast for lunch on the return home. It was a baking hot summer’s day. The air was hazy, with the lingering bushfire smoke from over 100km away. The surf was pounding and in the salty air, the second smell that came to my senses was coconut oil. The greatest, most pleasurable noise, was of young children, squealing and playing, on the sand, and in the shallows. It’s a joyful scene etched into my mind.

25 summers! A slight reframe, that makes you appreciate so much more, the beauty of the everyday

This Week’s Tip

“If not now, when?”