The Ick of Sharing Your ‘Life Lessons’

It’s been a while since I’ve shared ‘my story’ (thank God). I used to do this a lot in my ‘Female Entrepreneur’ days to rooms of early-career women or invincible first-time founders. Years before ‘35 things I learnt by 35’ became popular clickbait, I had curated an entertaining monologue of anecdotes and life-lessons from across my career - something for everyone… (so thought my flattered ego). Since retreating from London with a young family, I’ve gotten better at saying no, plus have had fewer reasons for self-promotion, but suddenly I find myself committed to an encore - the first in 5 years - and frankly, I feel a bit embarrassed.
So I’m killing birds this week by using this post to try and think out loud on how to bring my story up to date and maybe draw out some different conclusions with more years under my belt. The previous version, delivered to graduating girls at my old school in 2018 can be found here (antidoters.sub...) and as I commented in the blog-blurb at the time:
Thanks for reading Antidoters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
My inner philosopher came out …slightly patronising and preachy in tone I realise on re-reading - but as an exercise, it was an invaluable one. I’d love to write one of these every 5 or 10 years and see how my rules and advice would change… as even re-reading this 2 years later, some of these ideas have moved on.
Hello, 6 years later.
And yet I hesitate. Because increasingly I find the presumptuousness of the whole ‘what I want to tell you about life’ trend gives me the ‘ick’ - at least from anyone under the age of 65 or who hasn’t been seriously confronted by their own mortality. The older I get, the more aware I become of how much I have to learn, let alone impart…
Life lessons assault us. As previously discussed (antidoters.sub...) I feel an almost physical aversion to the modern cult of ‘personal brand’ and the narcissism I fear it encourages but it now seems to be a prerequisite for authors, musicians or creators to bring a ‘following’ with them should they want to go ‘pro’. Even start-ups now only seem newsworthy if their founders’ stories are newsworthy. Above all, it has struck me that my lessons - borne from my interests, my background, priorities, values, family-life and financial circumstances - are only really relevant to… er… me. The value in stepping back to consider these lessons is always greater for the story-teller than the listener. What is it they say? That we should not compare ourselves with others, but with who we were yesterday. We should be our own competition.
Strong sentiment but surely we can’t help but look for mirrors in the faces around us- whether close at hand, or in the spotlight. Chat shows, biographies, Desert Island Discs and podcasting wouldn’t exist and be so popular if this wasn’t the case. Stories are the most powerful way of influencing people; shared fears, hopes and experiences are the glue that connects us.
We seek inspiration for ideas we can borrow and combine into mash-up role models: prioritise like her, write like him, parent like her, financially-plan like him, command speaking fees like her etc. The problem is that huge success in one field for any one of these people has usually come at the cost of something… breadth of knowledge, family, friends, mental health, balance... How many of us are actually willing to make those sacrifices? And yet how many of us still end up feeling like failures because we don’t?
Scott Galloway (NYU professor, author and entrepreneur) spoke brilliantly on this at a recent podcast recording I went to ( • The Algebra of Wealth ... ) - admirable (if a little unlikeable) for his single-minded focus on wealth and status-creation, which he was honest enough to admit came at the expense of knowing his children when they were young.
He asked everyone in the room the question: what is ‘rich’? It brought to mind a social media reel I’ve now seen 5x of ‘influencers’ on the street asking passersby: ‘If I gave you a million pounds now, but told you you wouldn’t wake up tomorrow, would you take it’? No? Well that’s what tomorrow’s worth then’.
I for one, have always chosen balance and a ‘bit of everything’ over obsessive success in any one field. It’s why I’ll never be super-rich, but it’s also why I have so many awesome, wacky stories - from zoom calls with Royalty and starring in a documentary in Sri Lanka to going on a 48hr trade mission to China with a Prime Minister on the ministerial plane and (although I credit good fortune equally for this), I believe it’s partly why I have deep love and friendship in my life. I find the time to invest in it.
Last time around my 4 key life lessons were tailored to a room of 18 year old girls and consisted of: 1) why...