It makes me smile as I'm waking up in the morning, to anticipate my first sip of coffee. That's the starting thought that motivates me to embrace the beginning of another great day. Discovering what inspires you is a powerful habit to build. Some of these are very small or simple habits, like this one, but they're powerful when they're taken together with a few others as part of what keeps you oriented in your life, heading the direction you chose for yourself.
And some habits are a bit more demanding. Reflection is one of those. I just celebrated my 70th birthday, and, like every birthday, and many days each year, I've been doing some reflecting on it. And I've come to a few insights I want to share with you.
A question I love asking people of any age: If you didn't know how old you were, how old would you say you are? I let myself give two answers, in the spirit of fun and good conversation.
The first age I feel is 36. That's the year I signed up for an entrepreneurial coaching program, having owned Baldwin Supply Company for a couple of years. The excitement, the possibilities, the potential, the pressure — everything was firing on all cylinders.
The second age I feel is about 53. That's when I finally embraced adult communication. Around that age I came to a whole new understanding of how, if I wanted to live a life I chose for myself, I would need to take action, some of which would create reactions I would have to accept and deal with as part and parcel, the responsibility that goes with that freedom. It's also when the "average of five" started to matter to me: who you hang out with shapes who you become, and I got a lot more intentional about it.
At 70 now, I still have a burning desire to do more. I want to have impact. Make a difference. Be a great person. Have great people say great things about my companies, my teams, my family, and ultimately about me.
I'm in my 53rd year at BSC — my first love — and it's rewarding beyond words to watch my son Rob, in his first full year as CEO, do such an outstanding job. If the truth were known, he's been doing the president and CEO duties for several years. My work with Michelle at the Comma Club is the other engine. We have more to do and a strong desire to do it. Nothing beats being part of the lives we're honored to work with.
So at 70, with more possibilities than I'll have time to explore — as is always the case, at any age — I sit here and smile.
And it all has me thinking about age. Not the number, but what it means and what we do with it.
The ages stay with you
So, when I think about the age I feel and give two answers to that question, I'm not picking one over the other.
Both are still with me. The 36-year-old's fire didn't burn out — it just learned to share the fuel line with the 53-year-old's self-knowledge and self-awareness.
The 70-year-old sitting here with his coffee isn't a replacement for either of them. He's the guy who gets to use both.
That's the trick of the question. Most people default to picking a single number, the age they wish they were, or the age they secretly feel, and stop there.
But if you allow yourself, most of us can name a few. The 22-year-old who took risks. The 33-year-old who finally figured out how to stop seeing their dysfunctional family dynamic in every relationship and at work. The 42-year-old who learned how to listen, and why.
When we do this exercise right, we're not just picking years we want to return to, we're picking seasons of our life where a certain quality was front and center.
To me, that's the big frame around this: if all your life you keep learning and growing, every season of your life will be the time when one aspect or another popped into existence, came online, really came alive, or had a major impact.
36 was mine for fire and expanding possibilities. 53 was mine for self-awareness and adult communication. I'm not sure what 70 will be, but if I use the time I have this year to live the life I want to live, to learn and grow and not just float downstream on a raft of prearranged obligations and holidays and travel, I will look back and see that it was a year when some part of myself came into existence, came into more importance, had its influence, or finally got what it was looking for.
Mastery comes from refinement, not efficiency
One thing I know going into my 70th year is that repetition is something to avoid. I love the saying "I didn't get this far just to get this far," and that goes for personal growth as much as it does for success. There is a mentality you see in people in their 20s to try to maximize and get more efficient with everything. And it makes sense that kids transitioning into adulthood would want to invest energy in learning how to manage their time and energy — long before either one is scarce!
But efficiency doesn't come into learning and growing in the same way. At 70 I am not a more efficient version of the same person I was at 18, or 50, or 60. Do I have greater clarity and self-acceptance of who I am? Yes. Do I do more of what I want and less of what I don't? Absolutely. Which sounds a lot like being more efficient. But that's not how I would describe the process. To me, it's been about refining the relationship between who I am and what I do.
As I develop a better relationship with myself, I get clearer about my being, which allows me to focus my doing — any activity at all, thinking and feeling as much as my physical actions. It's not about efficiency per se, it's about becoming increasingly intentional.
I think when you're young and look at successful, older people, and imagine what's different about them, what needs to change in you to become more like them, you imagine they're doing what they've always done, just better.
And hey, that may be the end result. But what I'm saying here is that it's not the mindset that will help you get there. Because whatever it looks like on the outside, what it takes on the inside is all the work to see what you're doing, reflecting and getting feedback until you know why you're doing it, and methodically going through and deciding what needs to stay and what needs to go, and what might be nice to do more of, and what altogether new things to bring in while you're at it. Some percentage of what you're left with will be things you've always done, but with less hesitance or guilt, and with more ownership and presence.
Some of it is all new software running on the same hardware. It's not something that's obvious from the outside, so it's not something that's easy to infer from just watching others.
I say this because otherwise the purpose of all of this can get muddled. You could spend your remaining years — maybe the years where you have the most clarity and agency and purpose you ever will — trying to solve a puzzle without including the most important lateral move, which allows for the best possible outcomes. You don't have to be loyal to a particular version of yourself. They will all always be there. The journey starts where you are, and it connects back to where you've been. You can do all sorts of different things to bring in new awareness and perspective and capability, even radical things, and you will still be you, trying to live the life you want, taking side trips and pilgrimages and wandering around in places you think something good might be.
So don't get hung up defining mastery as “me but faster.” The days will blend together and start to look alike. You’re not trying to be more efficient. You’re trying to be more clear and aligned about who you are and what you want. You’ll be more efficient as a side effect, but you won’t get there trying to shave seconds off your mile, making incremental changes.
In some ways when I didn't have the financial freedom I enjoy today, it was easier to work hard, look for ways to improve myself, and constantly work on improving my odds of succeeding.
Comfort makes you good at what you already know, and can slow you down from reaching further and changing things. It takes a different kind of intention to stay on the path of learning and growing once you've already found success.
And that’s something I know all of you can relate to. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
Cheers, Dave