33 Pieces of Life-Changing Advice I Collected By My 33rd Birthday

Today I turn 33. For the third year in the row I am writing a piece on my birthday after reflecting on my life. This year is different because I am not going to share just the lessons I learned during the recent year but I collected from my teachers, mentors, and favorite writers throughout my life. 

As Daniele Bolelli has written, attaining wisdom is like sweeping the floor. Once is not enough. It should be swept every day (and certainly more than once a year.) I am in a process to attain wisdom from the start of my life. I attain wisdom through my own experiments and by learning through as Tim Ferriss put it, from my tribe of mentors. We need to choose mentors who can guide us because we cannot afford to waste valuable years trying untested stuff. I have mentors from all walks of life. My parents were my mentors. My teachers are my guide. My favorite authors are my coaches. Favorite philosophers, businessmen, thinkers, visionaries and many more are part of my tribe. 

I am going to share 33 pieces of life-changing advice I collected by my 33rd birthday from my mentors. Few of these pieces of advice are unsolicited, few of these are directly given to me. Few of these I collected through reading the works of my mentors and few of these I collected through observation. Few of these I learned by working with my teachers and few of these I acquired through studying the lives of the masters. Hopefully you can learn, as Otto Von Bismarck put it, from my foolish experience – instead of having to do it on your own time. 

• There are two core lessons of life I learned from my father. One is: if you are in it, you must be in with both feet. There is no place for complacency, laziness and half-heartedness in life. He taught me to make sure that I can pursue whatever I want to pursue but only if I am fully committed to see it through. Second is: Always balance the toughness of life with humor and humility. He faced tough times without losing his child-like spirit. He teaches me that the sign of a great character is that one must behave maturely when amongst the mature ones but should play when amongst the children.  

• If I have to boil down the life of my mother into one lesson then it will be this: Keep sharing the good news with others. Make them happy, inspired and hopeful. She makes me believe that words and stories have the power to shape people’s lives. Everybody is fighting the tough battle so share good things with them. Keep inspiring them for greatness. Share the hope with them that there is a chance to make a comeback no matter how dark things go. We need to make things easy for others through our communication. 
• One of my professors, Mr. Abdul Khaliq recommended that I should stay organized in my life. He teaches me that we can only stay ahead of time if we stay organized in the present. You need to pay your bills timely. You need to value your time. You need to be organized in your commitments. Yes, sometimes you will miss a few chances here and there because of this conservative approach but in the long-run, you will win.
• Mr. Shahid Jahangir is one of the early mentors I have. He advised me to focus on improving micro things in order to get better at big things. He usually advises that small is the new big. We need to take care of small things. We need to start small. We need to bring focus back to small yet highly important areas in order to go big later on. 
• My Marketing Professor Mr. Jamshed Khattak once told me a life-changing lesson: “Work Works”. I take this lesson and make it a guiding philosophy for my career. You need to keep putting out the work. Things will happen sooner or later. You have to let your work work for you.
• If I have to pick only one mentor who had more impact on me after my parents, it will be Tony Robbins. His each and every word guides me to greatness. Especially when he says, “Live With Passion” (obviously in his tone and commanding voice), it generates the timeless energy in me. 
• Peter Diamandis is one of those guys who introduced me to concepts of abundance and thinking real big. His insights give me a chance to understand the fact that the future is better and brighter than we think. According to him, scarcity is contextual. Imagine a giant orange tree packed with fruit. If I pluck all the oranges from the lower branches, I am effectively out of accessible fruit. From my limited perspective, oranges are now scarce. But once someone invents a piece of technology called a ladder, I’ve suddenly got new reach. Problem solved. Technology is a resource-liberating mechanism. It can make the once scarce and now abundant.  It is not about availability of resources but accessibility to resources. 
• Jack Canfield is one of those mentors of mine who helps me in understanding the fundamentals of success and also guides me in laying out the basic plan to execute for having a successful lifestyle. But one thing that stands out from his teaching is his one of many principles that “Empower yourself by empowering others”. He told me that he cannot be everywhere to teach everyone. I should step up for my own community, family, city and country. I should teach others what success should look like. We can become more empowered only through empowering others. 
• I love Seth Godin’s book Linchpin. It is a game-changer book for me. I learned a lot from it. What I specifically learned from Seth Godin is how to put things into proper perspective. Through his storytelling skills and the ability to deliver the best insights in easily packaged narratives, he taught me why we are doing what we are doing. His insights provide foundation to my creative act also. One key lesson I learned from Seth is to “Keep Shipping”. I have to keep doing and keep delivering my work. Rest will take care of itself. 
• Take 100% responsibility for your life. Instead of being reactive. Be proactive. This was the first lesson I learned in the personal development industry from one of my first mentors Stephen R. Covey. From his work, I really learned how to be incharge of my destiny instead of just being at mercy of what life throws at me. 
• It is tough to share anything specific from Ryan Holiday’s work because his whole body of work is remarkable. But here is his quote I love most, “Our facts aren’t facts; they are opinions dressed up like facts. Our opinions aren’t opinions; they are emotions that feel like opinions. Our information isn’t information; it’s just hastily assembled symbols.” This quote is seriously relevant in today’s age where things are getting out of hand. Everybody is sharing something but nobody knows what is right and what is wrong.
• If learning anything is an art, then Tim Ferriss is the master of it. I learned how to learn from Tim Ferriss. His methodical approach towards everything influenced me to pursue my own projects in a very systematic way. One key insight I learn from him is, “Pure hell forces action, but anything less can be endured with enough clever rationalization.”

• Make it big. Do not compromise on your vision. Do not play small. If you are running a startup, try to follow the footprints of the giants. Try to think about your marketing campaigns the way they do. Try to build a team in the same manners. Yes, they have unlimited resources but there is no money needed in thinking big. So, think big. As Brendon Burchard said, “Never let your small business make you small-minded.” Develop a grand vision for your industry. Make sure that you do not lose your inner fire just because of lack of resources. 
• Jim Collins is a seriously amazing business mentor. One can learn how to build a sustainable and successful business by just reading his books. He guides me on the path of thinking where very few are going nowadays. He insisted that we should first focus on “Who” and then “What”. To build a sustainable company, we need to be focused on people first. Once we have the right team only then we can go about figuring out what needs to be done.
• Marcus Aurelius is a remarkable stoic philosopher from whom you can learn the foundational operating system for life called stoicism. You can learn hundreds of lessons from his book Meditations but here is one of my favorites: “On those mornings you struggle with getting up, keep this thought in mind that I am going to do what I’m made for, the very things for which I was put into this world? Or was I made for this, to snuggle under the covers and keep warm? It’s so pleasurable. Were you then made for pleasure? In short, to be coddled or to exert yourself?” 
• I often talk about how life is too short to get lazy and how we can improve our daily behavior by making death a constant reminder. Here are a few lines from master strategist Robert Greene to put things into proper perspective: “Let the awareness of the shortness of life clarify our daily actions. We have goals to reach, projects to get done, relationships to improve. This could be our last such project, our last battle on earth, given the uncertainties of life, and we must commit completely to what we do. With this continual awareness we can see what really matters.”

• If I have to pick one giant businessman to learn from then it will be Jeff Bezos. I love his approach towards long-term thinking. As he wrote in his letters to shareholders, “We are working to build something important, something that matters to our customers, something that we can all tell our grandchildren about.” Question is: What one thing you are working on that can impact your upcoming generations?
• I always recommend my clients to have a calendar because calendar is the most underrated tool of productivity. As one of my mentors who taught me so much about execution, Scott Belsky said, “You can tell yourself all kinds of stories to rationalize how you spend your day, but the calendar doesn’t lie. The accounting of how you spend your minutes is the hard truth of your values.”
• Marcus Buckingham is the one who pushes me to focus more on my strengths and less on whatever I am lacking. According to Marcus, each day, life is sending us thousands of signals revealing where we are at our best, where we are strongest, most creative, most attractive, most special. Each day our life speaks to us in a language only we can understand. Each one of us should focus on what we are good at. Linger on this truth. You have galaxies within you. These galaxies will shine brightly for only your life span. And, upon your death, once they shine no more, nothing and no one will ever shine in quite the same way again. It’s overwhelming. What a responsibility. What an opportunity. What a gift you are for the rest of us.

• One core lesson I learned from Imran Khan, Former Prime Minister of Pakistan, is that presence is more important than reputation. His whole career stands on this philosophy. No matter what happens to his reputation, he keeps on showing up. He keeps his presence amongst the people. He keeps coming up with his point of view. Instead of hiding or running away or staying silent, he always tells his fans that he is present. He is not going to run away. We, too, need to work on our presence instead of our reputation. Things can hurt the reputation sooner or later but it will not hurt the ones who keep coming back with the response. 
• Ben Horowitz, who is a co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, is a seriously amazing thinker in the world of investment and leading organizations through building a sustainable culture. He said, “Over the past few years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been. Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company.”
• I learn a lot from Reed Hastings, who is a co-founder of Netflix, on organizational strategy. According to Reed Hastings, “The thing most people don’t understand about strategy is that strategy is pain. A business strategy shouldn’t involve safe planning and decision-making that’s focused on what will happen over the coming weeks, months and years. A strategy should be something that isn’t easy. If your strategy is not profoundly painful to you and uncomfortable you’re not being very strategic. Someone who doesn’t have huge resources has to be strategic. Really, strategy is a list of all things you’re not doing.”

• Reading is a habit that changes me a lot. It helps me in dark and bright times of my life. I was a reader from the start but what makes me a disciplined reader is this thought of Jim Rohn, “Some people claim that it is okay to read trashy novels because sometimes you can find something valuable in them. You can also find a crust of bread in a garbage can, if you search long enough, but there is a better way.” This particular thought guides me on a path to read more about personal development and stuff that can make me a better thinker and ultimately a better human being.
• Those who love to learn are prone to explore productivity so they can figure out optimal ways to do things. I too explore productivity where I find Cal Newport. On his recommendation, I took the social media sabbatical for one year and it changed the way I work. To do the deep work we need to become hard to reach. Once we build the habit to stay away from distractions only then we will be able to figure out ways to do the work that matters and create impact.
• Hustle is necessary but not at the cost of your mental health. What I learned from Gary Vee is to stay patient in the long-run but still be the hustler in the short-run. It is about balancing both approaches. Just to hustle for the sake of hustle or completing things fast is half-cooked perspective. It misses the long view. But when you are working to build something sustainable, you need to consider the long-term impact of your current actions.
• When it comes to learning sales and marketing, there are hundreds of mentors out there. Grant Cardone is one of those who walk the talk. I learn the intensity and 10X approach from him. According to him, whether your goal is to improve the planet’s social conditions or to build the most profitable company in the world, you will be required to use 10X thinking and actions to get there. Thinking 10X is discipline – not an education, gift, talent, or good fortune. 
• Ed Catmull, Co-founder of Pixar and the author of Creativity Inc. reminds us, “Excellence, quality, and good should be earned words, attributed by others to us, not proclaimed by us about ourselves.”
• Jeff Goins is one of those writers who gives me an ability to accept myself as an artist. According to him, “Re-creating yourself means letting go of who you were before and accepting a new identity. It means walking away from what people said you should be in exchange for something better. The reason many of us never self-actualize is because it’s easier to play a role in life than it is to become our true selves. It’s easier to conform to what people expect than it is to stand out. But this is not the way great art is made, nor is it the way real artists are made.”
• Nowadays figuring out how to do one’s work effectively is one concern. The other and equally important concern is to figure out ways to find meaning beyond work. As Daniel Susskind said, “For most of us, work is the new opium. Like a drug, it provides some people with a pleasurable burst of purpose. But at the same time, it intoxicates and disorientates, distracting us from looking for meaning elsewhere.”
• If you want to reinvent your organization or layout effective frameworks then Aaron Dignon is the man you need. According to him, management practices should shift their focus now. We need new operating systems to run the organizations. We cannot do the best work of our lives under the auspices of an OS that presumes our stupidity, our laziness and our untrustworthiness. We need a new OS where people come first. We need an OS where we respect the amount of uncertainty and complexity going around. 
• John C. Bogle is an investor and Chief Executive of The Vanguard Group. I really admire him for his point of view about money, life and business. He insisted that we should figure out “What is enough for us?” According to him, the confusion about enough leads us astray in our lives. We chase the false rabbits of success; we too often bow down at the altar of the transitory and finally meaningless and fail to cherish what is beyond calculation, indeed eternal. 
• James Clear, famous author of groundbreaking book Atomic Habits, said, “If you work, inspiration will come. If you wait, inspiration will too.” It is a brilliant way to sum up the whole approach of keep taking action. 
• We cannot outrun the problems. There is a wonderful saying by Mark Manson, “Problems never stop; they merely get exchanged and/or upgraded.” So, stop running from your problems and suffering and start working to solve those problems. 

Anyway, happy birthday to me. Happy regular July 19th to you.