I got a call recently from a former employee. “I need to apologize to you,” he said. I hadn’t heard from this guy in more than five years. I had no idea why he would be calling me, let alone to apologize. He went on to say, “I hated you.”

Turns out, he resented me greatly calling him out when he was late, sending back his work frequently for improvement and even pushing him in his personal life. He went on to explain, “You were holding me to a standard I didn’t want and I hated you for it. But now, I finally get it.”

See, it wasn’t until he got fired from his last job that he truly began to understand what I was trying to do for him. He quit working for me, got another job and quit that one after only a year. Got another job, quit. Got another, quit. Finally, he just got fired.

“It took getting fired for me to realize you had been trying to do me a favor. You were the only one who saw I could be better than I was and tried to help me. At the time I resented it, but now I am very grateful. Thank you.”

Isn’t it unfortunate how many times we must fall before we can begin to understand why? Why must we go down the road ourselves before we learn?

You can tell your child to not touch the hot burner… but reality is, the only way they are going to learn is to touch it and burn their hand!

This is true all the way through life. No matter what examples or warnings people are given, most people don’t learn the lesson until they are knocked flat on their back by it.

  • A woman gets diagnosed with bronchial cancer before she stop smoking
  • A man has a heart attack before he stops eating donuts for breakfast every day
  • A woman goes bankrupt and moves back in with mom and dad before cutting up her credit cards
  • A man gets a divorce before he realizes he’s been an inconsiderate jerk for the past decade

Sometimes the smack of hitting bottom is what it takes to actually ‘get’ life’s lessons. I don’t think this is the smartest approach to life, but sometimes people are supposed to fall—it’s the only way they will learn.

Imagine this… what if you could get an entire lifetime of wisdom, absolutely everything you needed to know to live a glamorous, wealthy, happy, healthy and joyful life from someone who proved every theory and lived to more than a hundred years old. What if they wrote every piece of wisdom necessary to live to that same level of success? Would you want to get a hold of that document? Would it change your life?

Probably not.

Wanna know why? Because, like most all wisdom which is almost insipidly simple and embarrassingly obvious, you won’t actually know the poignancy of each statement until you have actually experienced the pain or joy associated with the printed words. In other words, in order for the wisdom to have meaning for you, you have to have lived the words, not just read them.

Hence, sometimes we are just supposed to fall in order to acquire the value of the wisdom earned.

Centenarian Advice—Wisdom from 100 Years of Life

This past weekend I spent time with a friend in Newport Beach, Calif., whose grandfather was the centenarian I mentioned above. His granddad lived to be 102 years old. He was a very wealthy and respected man whose life exemplifies all the qualities above. He was everything most everyone would aspire to be.

When this man was born, life expectancy was 47 years, the American flag had only 45 stars, only 14 percent of homes in the United States had a bathtub, 8 percent had a phone, the average wage was 22 cents an hour and sugar cost 14 cents a pound. He experienced and lived through WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Great Depression, the Industrial Revolution, the first man on the moon, the Berlin Wall going up and coming down, several stock market crashes, the technology boom, etc.

He did write down the wisdom he acquired and proved during his more than 100-year life. He son put them into a document called 100 Years of Wisdom. The document is only three and a half pages, but contains some of the most profound wisdom you will ever read—if you have the life experience and perspective to appreciate them. Just one of these lessons could radically alter the course of your life. This document has only been shared amongst their family, but he has given me the honor of sharing it with all of you.

To receive this document register for e-mail updates in the upper right of this Web page (http://DarrenHardy.SUCCESS.com) and it will be delivered in the next few e-mail updates. If you are already registered for e-mail updates then you received it in the current update, but it will also be available over the next few updates as well.

Do you have your own simple but profound wisdom accumulated through your life experience? Share those with everyone in the comments below. I’d love to learn from all of you!