No Regrets in Life. Just Lessons Learned
I met Steve on my way to Singapore, which also means that I am writing this from my hotel room in Singapore. My flight to Singapore has two connections, Charlotte to New York to Hong Kong then to Singapore. I met Steve through a strange and interesting circumstance on my American Airline flight from Charlotte to New York, both of us were sitting in First Class. I did not know that I was upgraded to first class until I was boarding the plane. The flight was suppose to depart from Charlotte to New York at 10:00pm but at 10:30pm we hadn’t boarded. I was super frustrated because our original plane coming from Aruba was changed to another one coming from Boston in the last minute. The plane from Boston was late. During boarding since I was super impatient that I might not make it to New York to catch my next flight that leaves at 1:30am to Hong Kong or if I make it by running after I land in NY, my back might not make it to Singapore with me. I decided to board with Group 1, although my ticket said Group 3, so that I can go to my seat and eat the chick-fil-a I bought and while being depressed about the whole situation.
As I tapped my boarding pass, instead of green light it was yellow. Imagine my frustration that I might have been on the waiting list since when I booked the flight it was weird and felt like something is wrong. The guy at the gate told me to wait for a second. He asked for my name, when I told him, He gave me another ticket and said “You have been upgraded to first class.” In my head I was like, yeah.. go whallow in thoughts and anger, in a very comfortable seat. I got in and Steve was already sitting down at his seat beside me on the aisle. Few minutes after boarding was completed, the pilot announced that there is another issue somewhere in the plane and we will be waiting for another about 30 mins for the technicians to fix it. Everyone started murmuring with their neighbors, that’s when Steve sensed my frustration because of my reaction since I dropped the F bomb.
Steve asked me where I was headed and I told him. From there, our conversation began for the whole duration of the flight. Steve also works as a consultant but with the Pharmaceutical industry. He was coming from Chicago and heading to NY, for some reason had to make a connection in Charlotte. He has been working as a Pharmaceutical Consultant for 25 years and He only flies First Class. He has over 2 million frequent flyer miles with United Airline and is now building his American Airline frequent flyer miles. I usually wait for me to chat with people very long before I drop the question to them. When I asked Steve, If you can go back in time to when you are 25, what advice would you give to your 25 years old self?
He thought about it for a minute and said, that He accomplished everything that He wanted to accomplish in his life so He doesn’t have any advice to his 25 years old self. However, the advice He will give to any 25 years old person is to try so many different things like he did. He said, “Don’t try one thing and quit immediately too. Be patient. If things don’t work out move on very fast and don’t let regret or anger consume you. Try and join a Startup if you can, that way when a big company buys the startup or it goes public then you will reap the rewards.” Steve said that He has been working for Startups since He got out of college. He has got so lucky that all the Startups He has worked for has been bought and He made a lot of money. He retired at on point in his life but got bored and came back again to work for another Startup since He got bored at retirement. He said, “People sometimes ask me if I could go back in time and change anything about his life, what would he changed?” He says that he would not change anything since he accomplished whatever he wanted to accomplish in his life. He wanted to travel the whole world, He did. Whenever he wants to move from one city to another, He did. Steve thinks that if He changes anything, He might not be where He is today.
Moral of the story, join a Startup if you can and try different things when the previous thing fails. Live to regret nothing. I will say also that Steve is over 50 years old and he is neither married nor have kids. He said, He was busy with work and travels as a Consultant that it never worked with any woman that He was interested in. He travels about 85% of the year.
Until next time.. PEACE