Last week, I celebrated my 30th birthday which also happens to be my golden birthday. The official birthday was on a weekday and I waited until last weekend to celebrate in downtown Minneapolis which was a super fun and definitely an interesting night.

Shortly before turning 30 and for this past week, I have been thinking about the things I have learned over the past 10 years, the events that have shaped my perspective, and the ambitious goals and agenda that I have set moving forward. While I know it will be hard to do the last 10 years justice in a single post, I hope that whoever reads this whether the person is younger than 30 or older than 30 can gain a new perspective or help validate the perspectives that I am sharing.

Lessons Learned from the past 10 years:

I’ve learned a lot the past 10 years and wanted to share a few things that struck a chord with me. Below, listed in no particular order, are the lessons learned and a few thoughts around each lesson.

- Don’t take anything for granted

Never ever take anything for granted especially your abilities, friends, or family. Always be thankful for the friends, abilities, and family that you do have. A wake up call for me came when a person who I considered a friend died unexpectedly. Let the people you care about know that they’re an important part of your life.

- Ensure you and your friends reflect the same values

This is an especially important one to me. While I have many “friends” on social networking sites, I’m not hanging out with them all the time. I believe it is important to have a core group of friends that you respect but at the same time can give each other a hard time because that’s what friends do.

The other thing to remember is that the people you associate are a reflection of you. If you hang out with fat, overweight people, you will probably become overweight yourself. If you hang out with active, intelligent people who challenge and are critical of you in a friendly way, then you will become more active and intelligent.

I’m careful with who I associate it with because I don’t want to waste my time and I only hang out with interesting people who challenge me to be better through actions and words.

- Pursue your goals and never give up

I think the best examples I can give here are paying off over $80,000 in student loans in ~6 years and training for a marathon. Believe me there were times where I wanted to give up and go home, but the satisfaction of being debt free and the exhilarating feeling of crossing the finish line at mile 26.2 are things that I would have missed experiencing had I given up. Even when you think your goal is unachievable, break it down into smaller parts and achieve the smaller parts.

- Gain perspective by meeting new people

All I can say here is stop watching so much TV or playing excessive video games. Get out there and meet people. Learn from those people. Gain new perspective from those people. Try to have a wide variety of core friends. I think most of my core friends are way more interesting and cooler than me.

Key Events of the last 10 years:

In addition to the above lessons learned, a few events of the last 10 years have altered my perspective for the better including:

- Significant weight loss

I truly believe running saved my life. In 2005, I started running. Little by little, I lost 80 pounds. For the most part, I have done a good job at staying active and maintaining the weight loss. It hasn’t always been easy, but it has been worth all the effort.

- Completion of a marathon

Running a marathon convinced me that I could do anything I wanted. Running in general gives me confidence and mental toughness. Completion of the marathon boosted my confidence and mental toughness a thousand fold. I’ve always believed that 80% of running is mental.

- Traveling the world

Traveling to India, China, New Zealand, Taiwan, Brazil, Moldova, and Belgium has helped me broaden my perspective by trying new foods, hearing new languages, and experiencing new things. In general, travel has made me a better person and helped me appreciate the things that I have. Travel always reminds me how lucky I am and how I’ve got it – something that everyone needs to be reminded of from time to time.

- Becoming debt free

I’ve only been debt free since April 2010, but the moment I became free of all my loan obligations, a huge weight dropped off my shoulders. I could finally pursue my own goals without worry of maintaining a certain income level or worrying about that next payment.

- Professional successes and failures

I’ve also been impacted by both professional success and failure. I’ve been turned down for a promotion, but I persevered and maintained a good face amongst my peers and proved that I deserved the promotion. That toughened me up to accept that I will not always succeed and showed the benefit of hard work. It was this hard work and drive that led to an early promotion at my current employer.

Setting an Ambitious Agenda and Moving Forward:

There are benefits of looking back and seeing the journey one has been on to understand accomplishments and challenges, but it is always equally important that you continue to look forward and advance your own goals and personal agenda. This past week has given me that opportunity to take a deep breath to look at where I’ve been and what I still want to accomplish.

While I am not going to get into specifics on how I will achieve my own agenda, I will say that I will continue my pursuit of long term travel, living overseas, becoming fluent in a foreign language, and maintaining my personal fitness and health.

As I look back on the last ten years and think about what life would have been like if I took the “normal” American path, it would look something like this:

- own a house
- have 1 or 2 kids
- have debt (student loans, house, credit card, or car)
- maybe take 1-2 nice vacations per year
- be tied to a corporate job because of the need to have a certain level of income

I’m just not ready for that. I have personal goals that I want to pursue (and if there’s any single eligible women that share these goals, please feel free to contact me ).

As I thought about this more and reflected on my lessons and events of the last ten years, it all came back to the fact that I’m glad I’m not the “normal” American.

Tim is preparing to travel the world on a much needed career break. His travels have already taken him to New Zealand, India, China, Taiwan, and many places in western Europe. On his world trip he hopes to become more fluent in Mandarin Chinese, meet new friends, gain new perspectives, and find new opportunities. Follow Tim on his global adventures.

Tim

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