My 10 Golden Rules: If I were 20, I’d wish that someone would have told me about

My son is going to turn 20 next week.

So I thought about my 20th birthday and what kind of difference it would have made to me back then if I had known what I’ve learned about the world and the wonderful lessons the people in it have taught me by now.

But as I began thinking about all the things I’d like to say, a realization hit me: I’d have to get my message tight because the odds are high that no matter how strong my conviction my younger self or my son wouldn’t listen to a word I’d say.

Below are 10 Golden Rules with the hope that some of the words would stick and not go in one ear and out the other too fast.

1) How to succeed?

The education system you just went through has planted some SEEDS into you. Now it is up to you - and only you - to make them grow. There are no short-cuts to success. Succeeding right away isn’t even something you want because you won’t earn the hard lessons of failure.

So suck it up, stop whining, work smart, find your niche and be great at it.

And voilà you “suck seed”.

Don't forget to define what success means to you. Success is what you want it to be. You fail the minute you let someone else define success for you. 

Be specific. It’s tough to succeed when you haven’t defined the term for yourself.

Don't compare your success to what others call success. The only comparison that matters is with who you were yesterday and whether or not you are becoming a better version of yourself.

You might want to consider that success is not about competition but all about contribution.

Success for you could be the freedom to be yourself. And that in its core is the privilege of a lifetime!

"Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts… Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day, at the end of the day — if you live long enough — most people get what they deserve." — Charlie Munger (Warren Buffett's sidekick)

2) How to avoid money problems?

Live within your means: Don’t get caught in the marketing machinery of consumerism. Avoid seduction. Be frugal. And here I have to digress a bit: frugal is nowadays a rather unpopular word, yet its Latin origins mean to enjoy or use well. So please do see to be frugal as having a high joy-to-stuff ratio.

Become a master in delayed gratification. Plan your purchases (generally the longer the time frame before a purchase, the less you will pay). Do not go shopping as a form of pleasure or in the spur of the moment.

Do buy yourself more experiences (traveling is a great option) instead of stuff that you don’t really need. Don’t try to impress your neighbors or “friends”- whom you do not really like that much anyway - with material possessions. They might appear rich, but who knows they might not be that happy after all while serving their mortgages, credit card, car loans just trying to impress you and never reaching that ‘peace-of-mind-status’.

Do learn as much as possible about how money works, so you do not have to spend your entire life working for money, but have money work for you!

Be aware that once you earn USD 34,000 a year, you do already belong to the elite top 1% earners in the world (Source: Branko Milanovic "The Haves and Have-Nots"). So little? Yes! It always depends on the perspective that you take. Look at the world as your home and not only the street you live in. After all, you and only you set the rules for your happiness.

“It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple” – Rabindra Nath Tagore

3) How to get more satisfaction?

Start a business. It does not have to be a big one and should be – for a start – in addition to your “day job”. Multiple income streams are a great basis for long term wealth creation. It is statistically proven that the highest chances of becoming wealthy are linked to owning a business. Look for opportunities in fields that interest you.

And bear in mind: If you are not prepared to be wrong, you are not ever coming up with anything original. Be willing to be different. Do not be afraid to take risks. So, keep challenging yourself, even – and especially – after defeats. Failure and adversity are among the best ways to grow and to learn.

Listen to your inner voice. The moment you let the words of others stop you from taking action on your dreams is the day you can kiss them goodbye.

It certainly helps you to stay on course knowing that no matter how great your talent or effort, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

Important is to start.

You only get one shot at this life.

No, don't mix that up with what they are saying that "you only live once".

That is not true. You only die once, but you live every day!

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do” - Mark Twain

4) How to become rich (in monetary terms)?

The true key to becoming rich is patient saving starting today and an understanding that wealth accumulation happens over the course of a lifetime.

How? Take advantage of the Ninth Wonder of the World called compound interest. Heard of the exponential function? Study it! It’s the most valuable piece of mathematics you’d ever learn.

Then start a Regular Savings Plan at your trusted bank into a low-cost broad-based ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) as soon as you get your first salary. Do not buy mutual funds! More than 75% of them do not even manage to beat the benchmark index over longer periods. But all of them do cost more in annual fees than ETFs. What are you paying that higher fee for then?

You should totally do that. As with that Regular Savings Plan, you automate your wealth accumulation (in the span of a normal lifetime a mere $1 a day, $30 a month, will grow into $1 million). Better still save 10% of your income. Do stick with your savings plan for at least 30 years and let the money work for you 24/7 x 365 x 30 (money does not go on vacations!).

And then follow the smartest investment move: inactivity. Do not get scared by the short term volatility in the stock market. In the long run, it will always go up!

Always pay down debt as fast as possible so that this ‘compound-interest-bugger’ does not work against you.

The only good debt is one where the value of what you bought increases more each year than the interest rate you’re paying. Like a house or business.

Money isn’t everything! Money is just one form of currency. However, once you have a basic level of love, health, and respect, your actual quality of life is highly influenced by how much money you have. You can’t really live life to the fullest or reach your potential if you remain poor.

Once you have some money the benefit of having money is that it allows you to buy back your time.

Money buys you time, above everything else. And people who value time over money tend to be happier too. In fact, they get double the magnitude of happiness related to materialism. 

And always bear in mind that in life, it’s not how much money you make, it’s how much money you keep.

“Plan for the future, because that is where you are going to spend the rest of your life” – Mark Twain

5) How to be happier?

Time is your most precious resource. If you are a person with a flexible schedule and average resources you definitely will be happier than a rich person who has everything except a flexible schedule.

Step one in your search for happiness is to continually work toward having control of your schedule.

Be always conscious of your time.

Once you’re fine with the way you spend your time, you will be on the real path to freedom.

There is so much to be gained from just being able to be in the moment and able to appreciate what's going on around you right now, this very second. Whatever you do, try to make the most of it and seek to focus purely on the positive aspects of each moment.

Enjoy the small moments, they’re the only ones you’ll remember twenty years later.

The fastest way to improve the quality of your own life is by doing something that improves the quality of someone else’s. One smile at a time. One compliment at a time. One nice gesture at a time.

The shortcut to anything you want in life is to BE and FEEL happy now.

To get more control of your time it might help to avoid “facebooking”, “twittering” and “instagramming” your life away.

You might think you have time. You don’t. You’re afraid of death, yet you act like you have unlimited time to live. Humans are weird. We tend to reverse the useful truth to suit our egos. 

It’s useless to be afraid of death because you can’t control when it happens. But you can control how you use your time right now.

“Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get” – Warren Buffett

“Peace of mind is worth millions of dollars and, if you have a million dollars, then it’s priceless” – Andrea Wishom

6) How to be yourself?

People like to judge other people. This peer pressure can make you stray from the path you started to carve for your future. 

Preserve your integrity. Be honest. Be kind. Build close relationships with other people. Help others. Be reliable and always dependable.

Think big about your dreams and your work, but in your personal life, act small.

Don't seek approval. Seeking external validation is an empty victory at best and soul-crushing at worst. Strive for authenticity where you don't worry about the universe, you worry about the "youniverse," meaning you know that you self-determine your self-worth. What you're worth, how you're valued, is based primarily on how you view it.

Following your genuine intellectual curiosity is better than following whatever makes money.

You worry about living up to your standards, not someone else's.

A wise man once said: “All a man has is his name and his word.” Of course, this applies to women as well.

“One-half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying ‘yes’ too quickly and not saying ‘no’ soon enough” - Josh Billings, humorist

7) How to stay ahead of the game?

Think!

Schools have done a great job of teaching you what to think. Now is your turn to learn HOW to think. Caution: constant pondering or worrying about things you can’t control does not qualify here.

A good start is to question ‘common sense’. It often seems right because we can't imagine thinking about a problem differently. But why? Because we're generally lazy and closed-minded. This is one of the most dangerous ways of thinking.

The moment you stop being a student of life, it’s over. You should never become overly attached to who you’ve been in the past. Keep pushing. Keep stretching. Keep exploring. Keep thinking.

Keep asking questions. The best answers always come from the best questions and the best questions are always specific.

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds” ― Bob Marley

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain

“Trust none of what you hear, some of what you read, and half of what you see.” — Nassim Taleb

“We are what we think” — Gautama Buddha

8) How to simplify your life?

Building great habits is critical. The more of them you have, the more capacity you’ll have to handle the many competing claims life throws at you. Good habits can take you to unanticipated heights – and in ways that’ll almost feel effortless. The “muscle memory” from having developed good habits in your youth (yes, including basics like eating right, good sleep, hygiene, regular study and exercise, loving your family and friends) will sustain you when others struggle. So it is that your habits will lead you to a destiny you earn.

A good habit to have is to constantly grow your network by building new relationships with more and more people. Life is all about relationships.

Relationships get stuff done.

Good relationships keep us happier and healthier.

The second thing worth collecting besides a large network is friendships. Deeper connections with people we like - off-line and in real-life.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." - Aristotle

"The only thing that matters in life is health, family, and friends – all the rest is theatre." – Samuel A. Hardege

9) How to avoid doing dumb things with your money?

Be conscious about irrational behavior, we humans are so prone to conduct, and work smartly on avoiding those biases (cognitive thinking errors). Slow down and focus on rational thinking, when making choices and then fit your actions to your brain.

The book “The Art of Thinking Clearly” by Rolf Dobelli describes the most common biases with illustrative examples.

And don’t say you don’t suffer from the “Bias Bias”. This is the belief that you are less biased than you really are. Everyone is prone to cognitive errors. Some more than others, but no one is exempt. Coming to terms with the idea that you are your own worst enemy is the single most important thing you can do to become better in e.g. managing your money.

Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his work studying cognitive psychology, once said, "I never felt I was studying the stupidity of mankind in the third person. I always felt I was studying my own mistakes."

You’re twice as biased as you think you are (four times if you disagree with that statement). However, when you realize you are as biased as everyone else, you've won the game.

And always be prepared for unpredicted rare events, those ‘Black Swan Events’. Read Nassim Nicholas Talebs “The Black Swan” for the details on this important and undeniable consequence of randomness.

"It is remarkable how much long term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent" - Charlie Munger

“Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, states, and societies, it’s the norm.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

10) How to grow continuously?

This is going to sound so corny, yet it's true: Invest in yourself.

Reality-check: You don’t want success. You want growth. And those are two very different things.

Read widely and read more of the good stuff. Adults who embrace exploration and self-learning will have no problem keeping up, as learning new things is something they enjoy doing and easily becomes habitually. Skip that "brainwash" of our modern media and pick up some good books instead.

No time? Reading is like exercising. You make time for what you care about. Successful business people find time to read.

The person you develop into by reading, learning and investing in yourself has the capacity to earn more money, spend less money, save more money, invest more money, and work out through this process what the best use is of the time that money can now buy you. (That was a mouthful, I know.)

And as a bonus, you will undoubtedly come across many precious nuggets of wisdom shared by people who went through life before you and been there – done that. Like these:

"You can get everything you want if you just help enough other people get what they want." – Zig Ziglar

"It is what you read when you don’t have to, that determines what you will be when you can’t help it." – Oscar Wilde

"Whatever is worthy and right is never impossible. Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can’t, you’re right." – Henry Ford

"The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice; it is conformity." – Rollo May Psychologist

"Nothing is impossible to a willing mind." – Han Dynasty

Knowing my son, I’d be willing to bet that most of my 10 Golden Rules would fall on deaf ears. But that’s okay. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in life is that what makes it so much damn fun is that each of us gets to discover our own way.

Savor it and enjoy the small moments, they're the only ones we'll remember twenty years later.