17 Years, 8 Lessons
Not 17 random ones, but the 8 that truly mattered.
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Turning 17 made me stop and reflect. I wanted a list of 17 lessons.
But I don’t want to fill this with BS ones as fillers for the number.
Hello! I’m Zoli, the 17 y/o solopreneur building a tech business. Today, I brought the 8 biggest lessons that shaped how I think, ranked from least to most important.
Let’s get into it!
The 8 Lessons I Learned
8. Never introduce a big idea to a small mind.
When talking about your goals without working towards them, you’re risking 2 things:
By talking about future success, you get small hits of dopamine. This will make you demotivated when it comes to actual action.
You might share the idea with the wrong person. If you share your goal, some people might actually prevent you from success by discouraging you.
Your time will come, but until then: stop talking and start building.
7. You can’t make everyone love you.
Deep down, most people know this, but not many truly accept this. I myself couldn’t fully accept this yet, I was always the kind of person who wanted to help and satisfy everyone. But the truth is:
You only need to satisfy 2 people: your 7-year-old self, and your 70-year-old self. Of course, this doesn’t mean cutting everybody, even those who truly care. But most people have different images of you, and you can’t be everyone at once.
6. Dream so big that everybody thinks you went insane.
Most of us dreamed of doing incredible things as adults while in childhood.
But in some time, we tend to naturally give up on these, because we lock ourselves into the box of “reality”. This is why there are so many boring, usual people, because they don’t use that space outside of the box to grow, and limit themselves based on nonexistent reasons.
Never decrease your goals. Increase your efforts.
5. Don’t let others write your story.
It might sound weird, but your life is too long and too short to let others control it.
Never accept others’ advice until you truly agree with them deep down. The most dangerous mistake in life is not following your own path. Probably one of the worst feelings a human being can experience is to realize that they were a side-character in their own story the whole time.
You were told that you don’t live in a movie, your life won’t be an adventure, it won’t be exciting. I’ll tell you the opposite: imagine that you’re the main character of a movie entitled: [Your Name]’s Life.
What part of the story arc are you at right now?
How will today be a meaningful part of the storyline?
How will the movie end?
It’s all up to you.
4. Being able to stay calm in any situation is a real-life, legit superpower.
I experience this in school on a daily basis:
I don’t really care about my grades at school, and I don’t learn school-things outside of school. Yet, I’m almost a straigth-A student, easily better than some of my mates who get home and learn for hours. Why?
Because I don’t experience stress in exams (just a little bit with bigger ones, but that’s more like excitement, not the bad kind of stress). This way, I stay calm, and this leads to better ideas, better memory, and - for this exact situation - better grades.
I’ll admit it, I have naturally good memory, but even if I didn’t, calmness is my biggest “cheat code“. You won’t turn into the top student overnight, but calmness will give you clarity. And clarity always beats panic.
3. Easy never changed anyone for the better.
Pain is the gatekeeper of success.
You set an extraordinary goal. You have to accept that this comes with extraordinary challenges as well. Don’t let this discourage you!
You feel like it’s so hard, it might even be impossible? Good! That means you set the bar high enough. Behind every success story, you can find problems, challenges, obstacles, as pain as well.
2. The biggest mistake you can make in any life situation is to give up.
Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Discipline always wins. Just be patient enough to get there.
I’m not the best example of this: I gave up projects plenty of times. But what I’m good at is trying again and again. I fail a lot, but from each failure, I learn something, and I get stronger. This was my mindset when I started working on a business for the 5th time after failing 4 times.
I already realized this and you should too: you should enjoy the journey as well, not just work for the goal. Once you reached it, you’ll understand: the goal was never important, it was never meant to be.
1. The best time to start was yesterday. The 2nd best time is right now.
I had a hard time understanding it. I always thought that you need to have a perfect plan from the start in order to succeed with something. When I first started dealing with self-development and business, I spent literally months planning the perfect plan (I was 14 back then). The result? I didn’t even start.
Right now, I spend just a small chunk of time planning, mostly when I don’t have access to the tools I use to work, for example traveling. I only make detailed plans one Season at a time. More than 3-4 months? I just plan in guidelines, in keywords.
Don’t wait for the perfect time:
You’ll never have the perfect conditions. Starting is the perfect condition.
These are the 8 lessons that shaped me by 17. I’m really excited for the next year, because I know: the next lessons coming will be even more impactful.
Once you start to listen, life doesn’t stop teaching you.
Which one hit you the hardest? What are your top life lessons?
Zoli
This is amazing!
You started your journey very early.
I have to be part of the 100.
💪🏽