Do Not Trust Anyone Under 60

During the 1960s a then-new phrase popped into American culture with a simple warning: Do not trust anyone over 30.

Had that been valid or sensible, we all would have stopped trusting Bob Dylan for his poetry, advice and wisdom starting in 1971. But, this isn’t a commentary about music or popular culture, however.

This is all about trust. I have learned that if you place your trust in people based primarily on their youth, you are making a preventable mistake. Wisdom in life certainly will never accompany merely growing older. Accumulating life experience, however, is directly related to how many birthdays we each have had. Fewer birthdays always equal fewer opportunities for life experiences, personal growth, and attaining wisdom.

I chose the line of work that provides people access to certain wisdom and experience that I picked up along the bumpy road of life. If you want to know what successful people look like in the contemporary knowledge economy, look at me.

And so, I share this with you free of charge. You can bring true happiness and genuine success to your real life if you learn this one thing: People under the age of 60 typically have not yet had sufficient life experience to be considered credible to give anyone else advice or guidance or wisdom in how to life their lives in the real world. (You may find a few exceptions to this reality, but why even go looking?)

Youth is largely rooted in cozy imagination and innocent dreams. In contrast, genuine wisdom comes from surviving real life on the challenging and bloody planet we inhabit.

We probably need an updated warning: Don’t trust anyone under 60.

Do not pay people to be your life coach or your trusted guide or your special mentor (or whatever stupid, goofy, trendy phrases they’re now using) if mere youth is their strongest marketing attribute.

Instead, carefully look at the depth of a person’s life experiences, their training and education, and yes, that tell-tale indicator of potentially high trustworthiness—grey hair.

The many people that I have guided and helped over the decades to find happiness and success in real life will tell you: You genuinely can trust those to provide coaching, guidance or mentoring to you if they have survived sufficient years of life experience and have earned wisdom about what real life actually means.