Advice for Your Younger Self

If you are reading this, you are probably aware that this is my last year in education and will be retiring in just over two months. I literally can’t go anywhere without someone stopping me to offer congratulations or to ask “are you counting down the days-how many do you have left?!” I truly do not know how many days of work I have left as I have had too many things going on in my private and personal lives to think much about the days left. Another question I get a lot is “what would you do differently if you could start your career over” or “what advice would you give your younger self if you could go back?”

Those are really intriguing questions and I have spent some time thinking through responses as I have been working on my future endeavor of working with sports coaches and business leaders on leadership, daily habits that impact leadership, and building a better culture in your teams or businesses. I want to incorporate those questions into the work I do going forward. These are important questions to consider for our long term development as we all usually get so caught up in our day to day activities and “being where our feet are” (which is important!) that we fail to see the big picture and think about what we want to accomplish long term.

I feel like overall, I have made pretty good decisions when it comes to my professional life—there is always some second guessing decisions after looking back especially with regards to personal decisions I have made over the years-but overall you make decisions based on what you have in front of you and then try to make the best of those decisions. After taking some time to consider the questions, here is some advice I would have if I could start life over at age 21:

1. Begin with the end in mind. Start by thinking about what your values and mission are, and what do you truly want to accomplish. Think about dividing up your life into time frames-maybe decades-and write down what you want to accomplish. What we write down and look it we tend to get done more often. I personally would do more of this with finances and saving money for the future. I never really gave it much thought when I was young-not that I’m going to be poor in retirement but some smarter and clearer decisions when I was younger would help now!

2. Focus on relationships….results/outcomes are great but ultimately our work is about people. Positive relationships can last a lifetime-results are very fleeting. I focused too much on winning early in my career and took losses way too hard. It took a great friend and mentor in Jody Maske to show me the importance of focusing on people and making every interaction matter. Positive relationships help get us through the tough times in life and I have been blessed with that at all 4 stops in my career path. Hopefully that will continue in retirement!

3. Leave a place better than what it was when you got there. To do this, you have to evaluate where things are when you start, and then plan on how to improve the place. It starts with our daily habits and actions which can lead to great things happening. If it is a new job we are talking about, it means doing the things we said we would do in the interview through hard work and perseverance. Giving our best and committing to a growth mindset should ensure leaving a place better than when you got there!

I’m going to continue this topic next week but I would LOVE TO HEAR FROM THE READERS OF THIS NEWSLETTER! Most of you are younger and have many more years of work left, but I would love your thoughts on what advice you would give yourself if you could start over. I will share these in next week’s newsletter without your name unless you would like it included.

I look forward to hearing from you. Have a great week and thanks for taking the time to read my newsletter!

Coach K