Sorry guys for my recent silence, but I’ve been on a short break over the CNY holiday season. We had the usual visitations, but it’s less active than in previous years. Hey, you won’t find me complaining there. I mean, being an introvert by nature, I do prefer not to be a part of any large social gatherings. In fact, as far as I am concerned, any social gatherings that involve more than 5 people is considered a crowd to me. Anyway, the CNY break has been amazing for me personally because I had the chance to catch up on a lot of lost sleep for the last couple of weeks.
Thinking of Recording My First vlog in Awhile
I have plans to also make a vlog recording on this subject matter. It’s been a while since I’ve uploaded anything to YouTube, plus in the last couple of days, I’ve been feeling that mood to do so, so yeah. If you haven’t watched any of my previous vlog entries before, then you should know that I’ve been trying to make vlog entries for the last couple of years (again, not very consistent with that effort). While I got slightly more comfortable (and perhaps better) at it, I feel there’s still much room for improvement. It’s kind of like my writing, I know that I’ve been blessed to be gifted with this talent to create content, but I also recognize that my talent alone is not going to be enough. It took me years of constant writing before I got really really good at it. I think that’s probably going to be the same thing when it comes to making video content. I’m going to need more practice before I feel much more natural at it.
My 30-ies in a Nutshell
If I had to summarize my entire 30s into a single sentence, I would describe it as a journey of self-discovery. Even though I did manage to experience a few significant breakthroughs and achievements during that time, I have for the most part, spent it trying to figure out my direction ahead. So yeah, I think you can say that my 30s felt a lot like trial-and-error. If I’m being totally honest, I think I’ve experienced way more “restarts” in my 30s than during my young adult life (I mean my 20s). The best way to describe what a “restart” is, is to think of it like the need to start something from scratch after you have done everything possible at something else and realize it might not have been the best path forward.
Towards the very end of my 30s (I’m referring to 2022), I began to experience a lot of guilt. Through plenty of self-reflection, I figured that most of my guilt came from this feeling of having not achieved much for the last decade or so. That is despite the fact that I’ve managed to achieve a few significant breakthroughs. Between the “figuring it out”, trial-and-error, failures, and the limited successes that I’ve had, it just seemed like the negatives were overwhelming the positives.
It was only at the very end of my 30s and the beginning of my 40s that I managed to gain a different perspective of what I had just experienced during my 30s.
Seeing the Positivity in My 40-ies
So, I’m not sure if this saying is used someplace else, but here, it is quite common to hear some people describe men’s 40s as the “2nd prime period” of their lives. For the longest time, I genuinely did not understand what it means. All I could imagine was, it must mean better times, a time to shine, or excel, or something along those lines. But as I said my goodbyes to my 30s and started to look ahead to my 40s, I began to have a slightly better understanding of what this “prime period” description might mean.
As a man, I believe that this prime period/years can represent different things to different individuals. For one person, it could mean career/business breakthroughs. For someone, it could be finding happiness in finding love and starting a family. Personally, I think it can be a few other different things too. I am not one to judge since I’m also just starting to figure that out for myself.
But for me personally, I would describe my prime period/years along the lines of “finding purpose, clarity, and direction”. Okay, that’s just me trying to simplify what I think my 40s means for me. Remember how I had described most of my 30s as a journey of self-discovery? So yeah, this whole trial-and-error phase of my life has given me the time to work out whatever alternative routes I should take in life and the end result is this – I’ve managed to figure out my best path forward.
I’m going to quickly break it down what that all means:
Clarity and Focus
One of the best benefits of gaining clarity and focus is being able to clearly differentiate between what is considered essential versus what is non-essential. Just think for a moment, if you truly understand what is a priority to you, it would be a lot easier to identify what you must do, and vice versa. The downside of not having clarity and focus is that we can easily become distracted by many things that probably would not add much value to our lives and our goals.
Both you and I have only 24 hours in a day. How we decide to use the time that we have matters. You could seem really busy, but yet not be productive at the end of the day. You can seem exhausted, and yet have no idea where you’ve spent that energy during the day.
Having this newfound clarity has enabled me to see things much more clearly than before. It has become much easier for me to be more proactive with how I plan my time and energy on a daily basis too. I want to state for the record that it’s not perfect yet, I mean, there are still times when I would get a little sidetracked during the day, but having this clarity makes it much easier for me to bounce back, and to recenter my focus.
This clarity and focus that I’ve been describing apply to both the larger scheme of things as well as to the much smaller details of my everyday life.
Clear Direction For My Future
One of the better fruits of my self-discovery journey in my 30s is that it has helped me to develop a clear direction for my future. No, I’m not in the business of making lifelong predictions. I don’t think it is possible to see that far ahead. But I think it is possible to have a clear direction for the next 5 – 10 years of my life.
Remember how I described a major part of my 30s as a series of “trial-and-error”? It is that series of trial-and-error and restarts that has enabled me to develop a clearer picture of what I am truly good at (strengths), combined with my own passions.
One of the positive fruits of my 30s is self-awareness. Thanks to this heightened self-awareness, has enabled me to see myself without any disillusion. It is also good for me because I no longer have to allow what others think of me to dictate how I see myself (that was one of the negatives of growing up with low self-esteem and chronic anxiety).
This new level of self-awareness, combined with my understanding of my own passions, and the kind of skills and gifts that I have, has given me a very clear picture of where I can focus my attention.
It’s one of the major reasons why I decided that for the next 5 to 10 years, I’m going to focus a lot of my time and energy on becoming an Agile-UX Specialist. Sure, there are a number of different things that I’m excited and passionate about, and yes, I do have quite a wide array of useful skills to choose from, but I can’t do everything. Toward the end of 2022, I realized that I have a choice. I can either be really good at many different things, or I can choose to be an expert in a particular area. By being very good at many things, I’ll never be able to differentiate myself from others. But by being an expert/specialist in something, it is much easier for me to stand apart from the crowd. Besides, I think I’ve spent enough time being a jack-of-all-trades.
This new direction may change in the future ofcourse, it really depends on different factors and how the circumstances in our lives shift over time. I will remain adaptable. But for now, though, I’m so glad to have found a direction forward.
Lessons and Wisdom
Last but not the least, I want to talk about something really useful that has come out of my 30s. For all of the guilt of not achieving as much in my 30s and all of the mistakes and failures along the way, I did make up for all of that with plenty of lessons (life experience).
I remembered meeting up with a mentor once and while discussing my life and the struggles that I had to face, he helped me to put all of my experiences into perspective. In his words, he described my 30s as someone that has the life experiences and wisdom of someone in their 50s.
He saw it as something really good because it’s better to suffer those mistakes and failures sooner rather than later. For many men that have yet to experience those mistakes and challenges, it might be much harder to face them when they are in their 40s and 50s surrounded by many other commitments in their lives.
When I think about what my 40s will look like, it’s much easier for me to see a version of myself excelling over my peers because I am much more ready for whatever I might have to face on the road ahead. I am a lot more prepared now. In retrospect, I am grateful that I experienced those struggles much sooner than my peers.
Closing Thoughts
Being this prepared for my 40s doesn’t necessarily mean that I know everything there is to know about what’s coming. No. Instead, being prepared means I am ready to adapt when the situation changes, or when a new challenge rises up. I may not have all of the answers and solutions at hand, but I am definitely more equipped to handle those situations than someone that hasn’t faced similar struggles before.
I believe it is fair for me to say that looking ahead into my 40s brings me a lot more hope than I had expected. I mean, for some people, if they had experienced something similar to what I had experienced during my 30s, maybe they might feel a little more cautious/skeptical about their 40s. But I am thankful that I have a different perspective now.
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