#410 Excellent Advice for Living

David Senra· Host0:00

On my 68th birthday, I decided to give my young adult children some advice. I am not a frequent advice giver, but soon I was able to write down 68 bits. To my surprise, I had more to say than I thought. So for the next several years, I wrote down a batch of advice on my birthday and shared it with my family and friends. They wanted more. I kept going until I had about 450 bits of advice I wish I'd known when I was younger. I am primarily channeling the wisdom of the ages. I'm offering advice that I've heard from others, or timeless knowledge repeated from the past, or a modern aphorism that matched my own experience. I think of these bits as seeds because each one of them could easily be expanded into a long essay. Indeed, I have spent most of my time writing by compressing these substantial lessons into as compact and tweetable forms as possible. You are encouraged to expand these seeds as you read to fill your own situation. If you find these proverbs align with your experience, share them with someone younger than yourself. That is an excerpt from the book I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier, and it was written by Kevin Kelly. I was not planning to make an episode on this book. I randomly discovered this book from one of my friend's Instagram stories. I immediately bought it, downloaded it to my Kindle, and then read the entire thing in one sitting. And so I just wanna run through the bits of advice that I highlighted, and then if anything came to mind, I made notes on it, and I'll share those with you as well. The first maxim or aphorism that he has here is, "Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ