Hello Dear Friend,

Welcome to the Sunday edition of the Things I Wish I Knew Earlier (TIWIKE) Newsletter!

Here are three ideas on stopping the past from controlling the future.

TIWIKE #1: Just because you’ve always done something doesn’t mean you should keep doing it

Why we do the things we do is the subject of thousands of books.

Isn’t it odd we don’t have a consensus answer? We are a mystery to ourselves. THE mystery in more ways than one.

No matter how you approach it, behavior is complex.

When it comes to those things on your to-do list every day, habits, there are only two available choices.

Keep doing what you’ve always done or do something different. To figure out which choice to make in a given situation, look at the outcomes. Outcomes are downstream from habits.

Therefore, the basic rule says if you like the outcomes you’re getting, keep doing what you’ve been doing; but if you don’t like the outcomes you’re getting, do something different.

As a young adult, most of our behaviors are carryovers from childhood.

Which means we didn’t choose them. They were trained into us. Take time to pay attention to the outcomes of your behaviors to determine whether or not to continue doing what you’ve been doing.

Just because you’ve always done something doesn’t mean you should keep doing.

TIWIKE #2: Just because you’ve always known someone doesn’t mean you should keep them in your life

They say friends are the family members you choose.

Isn’t it funny how infrequently we choose them? We emerge into adulthood with an established network and so often continue those relationships into the future. But what if those people make your life worse with their presence?

I don’t believe in legacy friends.

One of the most interesting things about getting older is watching the people you grew up with develop.

This year marks 15 years since I graduated from high school. My fellow graduates are living very different lives. We have doctors and PhDs, drug addicts and prisoners. Some of them are dead.

Lives diverge more and more with each year.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people complain about people they choose to keep in their lives.

I always ask why they continue spending time with people they don’t like. “He is one of my oldest friends,” they say. Who cares? What does that have to do with anything? Momentum is a powerful thing.

This notion that you should allow toxic relationships to continue to infect your life into the future is absurd.

The fact is we only have so much time to spend with others.

When you allow legacy friends that don’t add anything to your life to take some of that time, that means you don’t have that time to invest in other, better relationships. Economists call this tradeoff ​opportunity costs​. Opportunity costs are the costs associated with selecting one opportunity over another.

The cost of selecting one opportunity comes from all the other opportunities you could have chosen other than the one you chose.

This is an essential idea when it comes to selecting your friends because relationships are portals to opportunities.

The old saying that your network is your net worth is so true over time. That means every legacy friend you keep in your life is stealing the opportunities that would come from better friends. Choose wisely.

Just because you’ve always known someone doesn’t mean you should keep them in your life.

TIWIKE #3: Just because you were raised a certain way doesn’t mean you should keep living that way

I was in my twenties before I realized my parents were just normal people who did their best.

They weren’t superheroes who did no wrong. They weren’t “dad” and “mom.” They were regular people who happened to become my parents. And like everyone else, they did lots of things wonderfully and other things not as well.

All of the beliefs we come into adulthood holding were handed to us in our childhood, mostly from our parents.

A big part of the journey to become the person you’re meant to become is shedding those beliefs and behaviors that no longer serve you to replace them with better ones.

To do that, you have to let go of the idea that everything about the way you were raised was correct. That is just an insane perspective. What are the chances that your parents handed you the perfect set of beliefs and behaviors? Does any parent in the world succeed in doing this?

If they do, I don’t know them.

I don’t know anyone who is perfect, which means I don’t know any parents who are perfect.

Unless your parents were perfect, you should do the hard work of determining whether the beliefs and behaviors you employ in your life serve you or not. Don’t presume that your raising was perfect. Presume it wasn’t, then go about figuring out how. It is intellectually lazy to believe something just because you were raised to believe it.

Think for yourself, make your own decisions, and adopt beliefs and behaviors that serve the future you want to create.

Just because you were raised a certain way doesn’t mean you should keep living that way.

Question for the Week

In what ways are you allowing momentum from your past to control your future?