5 Lessons I Learned in 2021

Welcome to my second article in the series of “what I learned in the year”. Last year, I made the first article titled “5 lessons I took from 2020”. So if you have not read this article, I recommend you to read it after you finish reading this one. I really enjoy writing these articles and actually look forward to wringing them. It’s a good way for me to review my year and see how I have grown, what I have learned, and what the different experiences and people through this year though me. I honestly recommend writing these articles to everyone. It’s very therapeutic at the very least.

A quick recap of what happened this year. In January, I moved to Spain. I worked there for my family company, helping our general manager with hiring and training new people. I spend there about 8 months. If you know me personally, you probably know that I always dreamt of moving to the USA, so in August I got fed up waiting for the government to lift the travel ban with Europe. I bought a 2-week trip to Peru, where I spend my "quarantine" by traveling the country. At the beginning of October, I arrived in Miami and spent 3 months traveling and meeting new people in the US. I returned to Europe for 2 weeks. Right now, I’m on a plane flying back to Miami to spend New Year’s Eve with the most incredible person.

So without further ado, here are the top tips that I learned in 2021.

Lesson 1: All the limits are only in your head.

One of the first cities that I have visited in the USA was New York. I got to say that the first time I exited the subway and saw the skyscrapers, I was amazed. I texted my friend that lives nearby. He is an immigrant that won the green card, moved to the USA and started his own company. He is the living proof that the American dream is not dead! He knows that I am an ambitious person and invited me to a Young Business Club meeting he was attending. It costs $500 for non-members to attend.

Not going to lie. I thought this was a lot of money for me to spend on one evening. I refused, and told him I’m not going to go. After I hung up, I was thinking “WTF are you thinking”. Think like a rich person. I know that I was going to meet cool people there. Everyone there has a business that is doing at least $1 million turnover a year. I called him back and I paid the $500.

Now, it’s important to understand my thinking back then. I had no idea how to move to the US, how to get a visa. I wanted to work for someone for a few years. Get on my feet and someday start my own business. At the YBC meeting, I have met 2 guys that changed my thinking. Both of them came to the USA with nothing. No one could help them. They slowly got on their feet and build their businesses. Now they are multimillionaires. They both make 28 years old and arrived to the USA at the age of 24. Seeing these guy's success story, switched something in my mind.

It was like the blueprint of what I thought was possible completely changed. I went from ”I’m going to work for someone else because this is the only way to go” to “start your own business because this is the only correct way to go”. Now, I’m not expecting you to start your own business. But I want this story to act as an example of how we’re thinking. And what we’re thinking is possible vs what actually is possible.

We all have subconscious limits in our mind. Telling us what is possible. And then we meet people that were in much harder circumstances, and they made it happen. After meeting these people, you start thinking, “maybe this thing that I think would be impossible is actually possible”. We have these subconscious limits in all areas. Our energy levels, our athletic abilities, or our ambitions. A good way to find out what limits you have is to ask yourself, “What would I want to achieve, if I knew that I would achieve it for sure?”. Whatever the answer is, this is your true limit.

Any target attacked with the right actions in the right amounts with persistence is attainable. Thus, never reduce a target, and instead, increase activity. - Grant Cardone -

Lesson 2: Don’t overlook spiritual growth

We all want to be happy. Most people think that being happy is like a horizon that they need to reach. But we can never reach the horizon. Some people have everything that they could ever want, yet they are not happy. Why? I think that the reason is that they are overlooking spiritual growth. People are growing in their relationships in their careers, health wise. But we don’t often know how to grow spiritually. What even spirituality is? That's a good question.

So what is spiritual growth. To be honest, it is quite difficult to define. For me, spirituality is what my relationship is with things in life. It is about how I see life and things that happen to me. It is about what’s important for you in life. For example, what is my relationship with people (do I treat everyone equally from CEOs to homeless), what is my relationship with money (do I course the rich or do I treat the money as a tool), what values do I hold in life (do I lie, steal, cheat). There are thousands of questions like these that change the way we perceive/experience life.

Don’t confuse being religious with being spiritual. Spirituality generally involves 3 pillars. Relationships, values and meaning in life. The reason why religion is so close to spirituality is that religion helps us define all of these 3 pillars. Religion gives us meaning in life (do good to go to haven, and tells us that God has a plan for us), helps us defined our values (what’s good and bad) and helps us define our relationships with everything and everyone. And in general, I think that religion really does this job well. This is why, typically, religious people are happier in life and commit less suicides (suicide risk was 27% lower in Protestants and 49% lower in Catholics compared with those with no religious affiliation). This is the power of spirituality. Change your relationship to things in life and get happier and more fulfilled.

I had a friend that curses the billionaires and thinks money is evil. I am not surprised when I found out that he is depressed. I don't know if this is the root of his depression. But I could see that he feels quite passionate about this. My advice to him would be, change your relationship with money in a way that it builds your life and makes you happy. For example, think of money as a tool that you can do good with. Get a lot of money and help people. Being poor and unhappy, you will not help anyone.

I might not have a big tip for you here. But I think it’s important to realize that if you are unhappy about any part of your life, you have to start with spiritual growth. Maybe all it takes is to change your relationship with the things that make you unhappy.

Lesson 3: Energy is everything

First, I divide energy into 2 parts. First is the positivity of the energy (does the person have positive or negative energy, i.e. quality). Secondly, how much of that energy does the person have (i.e. quantity). In this section, I will talk about the quantity of energy.

Do you know why I think people with difficult life have more probability to succeed than people with easy life? Because if you had a difficult life, then you had to be and do much more during these difficult times. You had to push yourself beyond your limit and what you thought is possible.

During my trip in the US, I met the most incredible woman that I know. She runs her own consultancy business for new mothers, and one of her core products is that she spends 48h with the family to learn about the babies to see what help they need in order to develop properly. During theses 48h, she does not sleep at all. And sometimes she has 2 of these 48h consulting meetings back to back. For me, spending even 1 night sleepless is impossible. And sometimes she doesn’t sleep for 4 nights in a row.

She helped me realize 2 things. First, she showed me, through her own example, that there is plenty of energy inside every single human being. And secondly, after I realized how much energy she has, I realized that I had a limit in my mind on how much energy I had available. In other words, when I thought I didn’t have more energy, I started knowing that there is much more energy left in me. This point comes back to the point of “limits are in your head”.

So to summarize. You are capable of doing more! "I have no energy" is just an excuse not to do the things you know you have to do. You can be more, you can do more. Just unblock that limit that you have in your mind. If that does not help, refer to lesson no 5.

Lesson 4: Life is made of ups and downs

In truth, this is something that I learned last year. But for some reason only this year I realized how important this is. This lesson is probably the best lesson that helped me be persistent in whatever I’m doing. First, understanding that life is made of ups and downs helps me keep calm during the hard times. Whenever things don't go my way, I simply say to myself, “life is made of ups and downs. Right now, you’re on a down. Don’t get sad, things will get better. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Just keep going”. You cannot believe how much peace of mind this gives me. Secondly, it helps me be persistent. The way it works for me, is that when things get hard, and I tell myself the same thing as I said above, it helps me keep going and not giving up. On the other hand, when things are good, I enjoy them as much as I can. I know that things will go worse later. The problem here is that a lot of people feel like things are good, and they stress because they don’t want thing to go worse. But let me tell you this. Things will get worse. So don’t stress about it. Just make sure that you use this good time to enjoy and prepare for the bad times (save money, get healthy, build new skill, whatever it is). It’s that simple. Keep calm and think, “life has ups and downs”.

Lesson 5: Who you spend time with is who you become.

If you spend your time with 4 idiots, you will be the 5th idiot. If you spend time with 4 millionaires, you will be the 5th.

I don’t know what to tell you more. Your environment shapes you. You see examples of how other people live, and you see what’s possible and what’s not. For idiots there are a lot of things impossible, but for rich people there are very few things that are impossible. People around you shape your thinking. You see what problems they have and how they solve them. I can tell you, rich people have more interesting issues than idiots.

I really understood this advice when I came to the USA. I don’t know what changed, but here I started to get involved with smart, ambitious and rich people. I saw what was possible. I managed to break my internal limits. I started thinking, “if they can do it, so can I”.

If you don’t have a lot of good friends, my advice would be, stop seeing them. I know it’s harsh. But “if you want to get a better car, you first need to throw away the old one, to make space in the garage for the better one”.

You can also start reading interesting books, in personal development and business. The reason this is important is that if you don’t have the access to rich people, you can still understand and learn their way of thinking by reading their books. It’s actually better than being friends with them. Because when they write, they think about every single word that they say. Reading their books is the best way to get inside their head.

So remember, if you want to be successful in whatever you desire, you need to think like a person that already achieved it. If you want to think like a successful person, you need to be friends with successful people to learn how they think.

One more thing. Successful people want to be around successful people. Read my article “5 lessons I took from 2020” and pay special attention to lesson 2 and 3 where I talk about the "personal value and how to increase it".

Bonus lesson 6: If you want to be successful, you have to wake up early.

In other words, you need to be self-disciplined. Waking up early is the definition of self-discipline. To reiterate. You don’t have to wake up early. But you need to be self-disciplined. I think this lesson deserves its own article, so for now I will leave you with this quote.

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment. - Jim Ron -

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading this far. I hope that you have learned something in this article and take these lessons to improve your life. Please share in the comments, what have you learned in 2021.