I’m an average Joe, working as a banker, from a small island called Australia. I have a confession to make as well: I don’t own a Ferrari or a fancy suit. That’s why this advice I’m about to give you will unexpectedly change your life.

I’m the least likely guy you’d expect to be mature. Against all the odds, I found a mature meaning for my life that has helped a lot of people online.

That’s not bragging rights it’s just what happens when you understand what’s real and what’s not.

Here are my brutal lessons:

1. Maturity comes from failure.

Age plays no part in maturity.

What makes you mature is when you’ve made enough fuck ups in life that you’re able to see life for what it is: a freaking miracle that you shouldn’t take for granted.

With every stupidly, ridiculous cock up in my life, I’ve matured. I’ve learned what works by experiencing what doesn’t work.

2. The best advice doesn’t have the most likes.

One piece of advice I gave stopped a young 21 year old from committing suicide. It wasn’t a viral piece of content yet it’s probably one of the pieces I’m thrilled I wrote.

Saving a life is more important than gaining likes on social media.

3. Beauty is not what you think.

Fat, skinny, tall, athletic — none of that equals beauty. Who defines what beauty is?

The truth I’ve learned, through maturing as an adult, is that the beauty inside is the most important criteria.

Let me remove the BS catchphrase I just said and explain it in simple terms: beauty is the way someone acts and how they make you feel.

Beauty is a by-product of working on yourself and the way you think. Eat that INSTAGRAM!

4. It’s not about ‘one’s self.’

Take the focus off yourself and you’ll see just how easy it is to get everything you could ever want.

Progressing your own selfish desires only leaves you feeling empty. You’ll always be asking “Is this all there is?”

I’ve been that guy. I was obsessed with ‘my business’ and ‘my car’ and ‘my money.”

None of the cliché things that a lot of us aim for ever move the dial on your happiness meter. It’s not about you.

5. No one’s reached the pinnacle.

Not Elon. Not Zuck’s. Not Gates. Not Jay Z. Everyone’s just getting started.

One area of our life could look amazing; we may even be famous for it. That’s not the pinnacle. There’s always another goal or another passion to pursue.

None of us know the true limit of human potential. We’ll never know if we’ve reached the pinnacle. There’s always more to do. There’s always another goal.

When you see success as temporary and see fame for what it is, you stop chasing it.

“Chase meaning instead and quit falling in love with idols who you’ll never be and probably never want to be if you got to live a day in their shoes”

6. Focus on the essentials when it comes to owning stuff.

Even then you’ll probably get carried away, let’s face it.

The need to have more won’t take you further along the Yellow Brick Road. In fact, the reality is quite the opposite.

Having more stuff is only going to make you more stressed and want more, thus resulting in an empty feeling that is hard to explain to almost any mature adult.

“Less will always be more because less is how you get more of the good things in life — happiness, love, meaning, etc”

7. Men cry too and so do leaders.

Everyone has a rough day or a situation that brings us to tears. It’s okay not to be okay.

Crying is how we know what matters to us. Every time we cry, we gain another piece of the puzzle to the jigsaw that is our life.

There’s no point pretending you don’t cry. We all cry because we’re all human. Emotion is what connects us together and makes us united.

It’s the one feeling we can’t stop no matter how hard we might try, so we can look #normal. Screw normal.

8. The hardest work is working on yourself.

Not hustle till you die.
Not grinding after midnight.
Not working seven days.

We can all work hard like a machine but working on ourselves is what defines us as being human. It’s one of the hardest things in life to look at yourself in the mirror and say “I’m an asshole.”

That’s the conversation I had with myself five years back. I was a rude, arrogant, sick, twisted individual that had let greed take over from everything that makes logical sense.

Figuring out my own mind and using it to help others is the hardest work I’ve ever done. In the early stages, working on myself felt like being in prison. I had to get really good at seeing the stuff I didn’t want to see.

Numbers of hours, revenue generated and how good you are at ‘hustling’ don’t matter. What matters is what you work on you.

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