34 Life Lessons

34 Trips around the sun!

Let me tell you 34 life lessons that I have learned in that time.

1. Find a great woman! One that is going to tell you when she is proud of you. One that is going to love you when no one else does. One that will love you even when you don’t deserve it.

2. Pursue your wife! Even though you aren’t in the “dating” stage anymore, keep dating her.

3. My attitude when I walk in the door in the evening dictates the attitude of my home for evening. Leave it all at the door.

4. Get a mentor. You CAN NOT learn life lessons or life experience from Google! Some of you need to hear that.

5. Be a good friend! Every one of the men pictured knows that I would run through a wall for them. I know that every one of them (and some that aren’t pictured) would do the same for me.

6. Love your kids. You are their HERO. They hang on to your every word, don’t forget how powerful that is. Good and bad.

7. Keep your word. Don’t be the person that doesn’t follow through.

8. Earn the right to speak into someone's life. Don’t just assume that you have it.

9. Find people that are going to hold you accountable. Don’t surround yourself with a bunch of “YES” men. You need people who can help point out your blind spots AND work on them.

10. God is CONSTANTLY working in your life. He hasn’t forgotten about you.

11. Let your yes be your yes and your no be your no. If you are saying yes to something or someone you are saying no to something or someone else. A lot of times that happens to be to the people that love you the most. Thanks Scott Griffith

12. “No one ever said that they learned their deepest lessons of life, or had their sweetest encounters with God on the sunny days” John Piper The most difficult times in my life have been when I have grown the most.

13. LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR. Go out and talk to your neighbors! Especially right now.

14. You can completely disagree with someone and still walk away loving them. That speaks more to someone than trying to convince them to think like you.

15. Encouragement does SO MUCH more for you and OTHERS than gossip.

16. Find a 2 AM friend. Someone that you can call at ANYTIME and they will pick up the phone and walk through your toughest times with you.

17. A college degree is not necessary to be successful. Some of the most influential and successful people that I know don’t have a high school degree. You define that, not a piece of paper.

18. Sometimes all you need, to love someone well, is to just be present.

19. My favorite people in this world are the ones that can make you feel like you are the only person in the room. My aunt Karen Guthrie was like that. Be more like Karen.

20. I wish I had listened to adults earlier in my life. So much good information was poured into me that I should have taken. Apparently I didn’t know everything.

21. It is amazing what music can do. I don’t think there is anything that can bring people together quite like music does. Maybe food.

22. Grandma won’t be here forever. I can’t remember many of the gifts that she got me but I can remember MOST of the talks that we had.

23. Experiences are MUCH more valuable than things.

24. Time is definitely are most valuable possession. Remember that the next time someone is willing to drop everything to come sit with you and listen.

25. Being busy all the time does not mean that you are successful.

26. Let everyone that you love know that you love them. Vocalize it. It may be the last opportunity you get

27. People are going to let you down. They are human….what do you expect?

28. It’s not fair to hold others to expectations that you don’t hold yourself to.

29. Transformation of the mind and heart doesn’t happen instantly. It is a process. Fall in love with the process and the work that God is doing.

30. Don’t take simple things for granted. You’re are not just going to get pregnant whenever you want to or when you plan it.

31. Always be aware how powerful your words can be to you and others around you. You never know what someone else might be going through in their life.

32. Love others as you would want to be loved. I think we have to love who we are (not in a narcissistic way) in order to TRULY love others the way that we are called to.

33. Transparency makes for a less stressful life (at least for me). I am an open book. Joy tells me that it is sometimes good and bad.

34. Life is hard. Make sure you surround yourself with those that you want to go through it with you. Those that you love and that love you back.

One extra.

#35. Notorious B.I.G is the greatest rapper of all time.

I know that there are SO many more to learn and I am looking forward to it!