James Schramko here. I’m going to share with you something a mentor taught me once that I found to be very handy on my business journey.
My mentor was in his 50s when I first met him. And he was an avid reader of lots of books, and he’d also done a lot of investigation into the success habits of people. And he used to say to me, “James, age equals wisdom.”
And he would explain, you know, when we’re young we think we know everything when, in fact, we know virtually nothing. As we get older and more mature, we start to realize that we didn’t actually know everything when we thought we did. And now, we’re starting to get the picture. And then, of course, as we get much older, we start to have this accumulation of experience and, in his words, wisdom. So, I’ve always found much older, more mature people to learn from.
My grandparents were role models in my early part of my life. I’ve found autobiographies and I’ve studied the history of lots of more senior business people who have figured stuff out. And, of course, I had people like this mentor along my journey who just knew things.
So, now, I find myself in a mentoring position where my age equals wisdom for people who are coming up through the ranks. Maybe they haven’t learned some of the things that I’ve already learned as you go through life. I mean, I’ve done everything from being a General Manager through to having five children. So, you do learn a few things in life when you go through these experiences.
And what I suggest is, you find someone who’s a little bit older and a little bit wiser to learn from, too, so that you can actually fast track your success, make less mistakes. And that means being humble and knowing that other people have some of your answers.
Hopefully, this is helpful. I don’t know if you agree or not. I certainly welcome any comments. I wonder if you think age equals wisdom, as well.
Leave a Reply