Hello everyone and welcome back to the English with Neil podcast episode number 14.
The topic of today's episode is the benefits of getting older.
Now when I said the word older, what image popped into your mind?
Was it an old person like your grandmother or grandfather?
When I think about getting older, that's immediately what I think about.
I think about people like senior citizens or elderly people in our society.
So senior citizen or an elderly person is someone much older than you are.
This would be someone like my grandmother.
So my grandmother is currently 86 years old.
We call her a senior citizen or an elderly person.
So sometimes when we think about getting older, we think about the negative things, such as taking visits to the hospital or bad health or not being able to move.
Those are the bad things, the negative things about getting older.
But in today's podcast, I want to talk about the benefits or the good points about getting older.
Now, I am obviously not a senior citizen.
I am not an elderly person.
At the time of this recording, I am 35 years old.
So in society, I guess you would call that maybe mid-age or a little under mid-age.
I'm considered young, but I'm not young like I was in high school or in college.
I actually have some Life experience.
I've been married for 11 years.
I've been a father for 7 years.
I've been a business owner going on 6 years.
A full time entrepreneur.
So I have some life experience.
And so I want to talk about some of the benefits that I have found about getting older.
So the first thing that I have found is that I have a lot of new perspectives on a lot of things.
New perspective means means that.
I see things differently I don't see things like I saw them when I was in high school or in college because I'm married now I have a family I have a business I have a lot of responsibilities so when I was younger I didn't have a lot of responsibilities.
I had a car.
I had a part-time job.
I eventually moved out of my parents' house when I was 21.
So I started to have a little bit of responsibility.
But I was still a little careless with my time.
I didn't value my time when I was younger.
Now I really value my time.
I value how I use my time.
I value the people that I spend time with the books I read, the things I listen to, the things I watch.
I really value that time if something is not benefiting me, if something is not helping me.
I don't engage in it.
Engage means that I don't take part in it or I don't entertain it.
Let's talk about people.
If people make me feel not good about myself, I don't hang around those people.
Or if there's something on TV that I think is ridiculous, I don't watch those TV shows because they don't add anything to my life.
They don't benefit me.
So number one, new perspective.
I've gained a lot of new perspective on a lot of things.
Number two.
This is a big one for me is I've gained a lot of new understanding, new understanding of people, understanding of business money government, the economy.
I have a lot of new understandings now that I'm older.
But plus because I'm an entrepreneur.
So I have a lot of responsibility to my staff, my family, my community.
So I have a lot of new understanding.
I know now how to be more responsible.
Because I wasn't very very responsible when I was younger.
I was responsible but now I'm a lot more responsible because I'm more mature.
Mature means to grow up.
So I grew up a little bit or a lot actually.
So number two.
I've gained a lot of new understanding about a lot of things in life.
And number three, I've learned how to slow down and be patient.
When I was younger, especially in high school and a little bit of college, I wasn't patient at all.
Patient means to have the ability to wait for things to happen.
So I wasn't patient at all.
I always wanted things to happen quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly.
You know, I may have cheated a little bit, may have cut Cut some corners.
Cut corners means that you cheat a little bit.
If you think about a box, a box has four sides.
But if you don't go all the way to the edge, you kind of curve a little bit, you cheat a little bit.
That means you cut corners.
So I may have cut some corners when I was younger because I didn't have I wasn't really mature.
I wasn't I didn't have a lot of patience.
I wanted things quickly.
But now that I'm a little older I've learned that when you want things to happen.
They take time.
Like learning English.
It takes time.
It took me a lot of years to become fluent in Japanese.
I didn't just read a book.
I didn't just come to Japan for a week and say, hey, I'm fluent now.
No, it took time.
So when I talk about time, I'm not talking about in terms of days or weeks.
Time meaning months and years, maybe even decades, especially when you're trying to build a business.
Now I understand that things don't always happen when you want them to happen.
You need patience.
Patience doesn't mean that you sit around and do nothing and be lazy.
Patience means that you keep working You keep doing the work.
You keep practicing.
And as you get better, those things that you want, they now come to you.
Now that you have more skills, more experience, more time.
So I've learned to be more patient.
I'm still not 100%.
I'm not patient with everything.
I still want to have some things quickly.
But for the most part, I've learned to be more patient.
And so those are some of the benefits that I have found to getting older having new perspective, new understanding, slowing down and having patience.
All right, everyone, that is it for today's episode.
Thank you for tuning in to the English with Neil podcast.
I look forward to speaking with you in the next episode.
Take care, everyone, and talk to you soon.
Peace.
