Amazing Life advice from the most interesting people I’ve met

Meditating in Thailand 3D Art Museum

Amazing Life Advice from the most interesting people I've met so far.

As a Martial Artist, I am constantly seeking growth and love learning from other people. I enjoy engaging in meaningful conversation with the amazing people I have met throughout my life so far and get at least a single piece of life advice from them. I have taken these messages to heart and have been changed for the better by meeting these incredible people and listening to their words. I believe it has had such a positive influence on myself that I wish to share a few messages with you.

Realize that progress and growth are three dimensional

A great passion of mine has always been learning new things and with any new skill, a beginner is able to clearly see the fruition of their efforts and feel confident in their time spent in practice. However, when you begin to gather skill and master the basics it is easy to forget those feelings you have accumulated and become frustrated with your stagnation during a plateau phase.

An extremely close friend of the woman who raised me is married to a renowned Zen master who I had the incredible fortune of sharing a meal with. Whilst discussing martial arts he mentioned struggling with similar emotions to mine in his Kendo practice as a young man. When I asked how he had dealt with these thoughts he advised to think of skill progression in the form of a line chart in which beginner first starting has so much to learn which will result in a steep incline. There will come a point in which the bar will fall flat for a period of time however, it is not that you are not improving but, that you are only seeing the graph two-dimensionally when really, there is the third dimension you should be taking into account, which is the depth of the skills that you have already developed.

What you choose to do today, doesn’t have to be what you do tomorrow or a year from now

Most of us have, will, or are going through the “What am I going to do with my life” phase and this piece of advice came to me when I needed it the most.

After one of my classes, a fellow classmate and I stayed back and “talked story” as we say in Hawaii. The conversation shifted to his job history and I was amazed at the things he had done in his life thus far, which ranged from teaching to becoming an airline pilot with a number of other interesting positions between them. He left me with a single line that has influenced my decisions which was “What you choose to do today, doesn’t have to be what you do tomorrow or a year from now”. It was a simple piece of advice that has stuck with me and made me continually question how much I enjoyed what I was currently doing.

This would be reinforced at a later date by one of my favorite customers at a higher end restaurant I worked at in my early to mid-20s. He had been a teacher for all his life, and at the age of 45 had decided it was time for him to pursue his dream of becoming a lawyer. He continued teaching while studying for the bar and after passing was able to live out his dream job. One of the last times I had the opportunity to speak to him he reminded me that it’s never too late to start something. As they say in real estate, the best time to buy a house was 10 years ago and the next best time is today!

Through the restaurant I had the opportunity to meet a number of amazing people, editors for magazines who were paid to travel the world and find interesting stories, recruiting managers for Google and artisans from Japan, however, my favorite conversation had been with an older couple on break from sailing the world via yacht to visit Hawaii. The male, a former chef had quit his job to buy the yacht and met the female somewhere in South America where they decided to continue their journey together. The woman, who worked in New York as an investment banker had always dreamed of traveling but never found the time. One day after finishing “The Art of Non-Conformity” by Chris Guillebeau’s she decided to just make it happen and made it possible for her to only be in the office for a few months out of the year to sail the world for the rest. Their lifestyle and the book she recommended me to read had inspired me to follow my dreams and design the non-conventional lifestyle I wanted.

Check out the life changing book here!

If you truly love and have a passion for something, you should just do it. Don’t concern yourself with money, and it will come.

I enjoy attending Bon Dances in the summer, I also apparently have a very inviting aura about me and am approached a lot. An elderly grandmotherly figure seated near me had begun talking to me about Obon season and the conversation eventually shifted to her life story. She would turn out to to be the first Asian female opera singer in the world. We had a very memorable conversation about her life, memories, experiences and old Hawaii before she started asking me about myself. She was delighted to hear of my personal passions, however, when asked if she would have ever made the monetization of her passion a primary concern, she made it clear that her success would never have come if that was her only goal.

Her words have echoed clearly in my mind since then, “If you truly love and have a passion for something, you should just do it. Don’t concern yourself with money, and it will come”.

Never regret not starting something sooner, there are many factors that make you successful which come with time

This last piece of advice comes from my entrepreneurial grandfather who after moving to American from Japan alone at the age of 6 and going through the war, managed to build an extremely successful construction company which allowed him to retire and travel the world constantly. He began his entrepreneurial journey at 40, after working his way up from day laborer to a supervisory position then assisting in a construction startup company he decided to finally create his own. He had always known that he would eventually start his own company and tried a few ideas prior to this, however, he finally took the leap when the SBA held a class for small minority businesses. He said to me that at one point he regretted not starting it much sooner, but deep down knew that it had been the right time for he now had much more experience and maturity on his side which he owed a large part of his success to.

Hopefully, something here will help someone the way it helped me. I’d love to hear any life advice you have picked so please share it with me @ransonikuo

I wrote this post for medium, check out the original here!