Hi. Charles here doing the post this time.
What I want to talk about is the very best way you can save yourself from regret, sadness, feeling empty, feeling life is meaningless. We’re all at risk of this.
The thing you can do is something I just started doing about 5 months ago. Take lessons. In anything you want.
For example, at my age, not a kid any more by a long shot, I started taking trumpet lessons. I wanted to play a melody instrument, and that’s what I chose. I searched online and found a highly recommended teacher. And we began. Via Zoom!!
Now let’s be clear. At first it was hard and I was terrible. But hey, that’s what learning is all about. Mastering something you don’t know. It will be hard and you will be terrible.
But!! Week by week I got less terrible. I started playing notes that sounded more like music. I played simple, dumb-ass tunes but still! Look at me! I’m playing a song. And the whole time I get to hold a trumpet in my hands.
Plus I get to BE in the hands of a caring, supportive, incredibly helpful teacher who can guide and encourage me through every next step.
It felt and still feels great.
What should you take lessons in? Hey, whatever you want! Something you’ve always wanted to do—salsa dancing—or something that just popped into your head—learning Spanish. All you need are these ingredients:
Figure out what you want to learn.
Feel the desire and connection with what you want to learn.
Find a teacher.
But don’t delay! Here’s something I can GUARANTEE. Once you get going, you’ll wish you’d started sooner!!
The benefits of doing this are huge. More than you might imagine:
In a life where you might have felt all too static, you’ll feel yourself growing.
Your sense of yourself will improve and enlarge as you see your developing new skills and talents.
Whatever it is you’re learning will open doors you didn’t even know existed.
You’ll start feeling life itself is filled with new possibilities.
You’ll find yourself loving something you didn’t know you could love, and you’ll find it will love you back.
If you have an even half-way decent teacher, you’ll treasure that relationship.
You’ll have more hope and confidence, no matter what you're learning.
You’ll come to understand that life itself is about learning and growing, about our need for others, and, ultimately, about our need to give back to others.
This is exactly how people manage to banish regret, sadness, feeling empty, feeling life is meaningless. It’s amazing how much one simple step can accomplish.
Why wouldn’t you do this? People resist this for three main reasons:
Too busy. Hey, you know what? I’ve spent my whole life working with hugely busy people and I’ve found that no one is too busy to do what’s important to them. And if you’re feeling sad and empty, you need to do something!
You don’t want to feel like a beginner. I get it. It’s too depressing to be starting out at the bottom. But that’s the wrong way of thinking about it. Would you call yourself a “beginner” if you were investing in a promising start-up company? You’d say you were getting in at the ground floor. Well, that’s all you’re doing here. It’s not about the beginning. It’s about where you’ll be in two or three year, and that’s likely to be thrilling.
You hated lessons as a kid. Sure. Because you were made to do it. And because it was something you didn’t want to learn. But I’m telling you: it’s different now. Now you want to learn, and now this is something you want to learn. That’s a transformative difference.
You’ll see!