The Paper: 15 Principles for Building a Satisfied Life

After reading Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, I was inspired to write something for my 11 grandchildren.

I call it “The Paper.”

These are principles I have learned through experience, observation, success, failure, faith, books, and the people I’ve known.

My grandchildren will have to make their own decisions and find their own paths. But when I sit down with them, these are the things I believe matter most.

1. Live Healthy

Take care of the body God gave you.

Don’t smoke. Don’t use drugs. Don’t drink. Exercise. Eat well. Get enough sleep. Take care of yourself physically and mentally.

Your health affects everything else you want to accomplish. Money means very little if you don’t have the health to enjoy it.

Develop healthy habits while you’re young. What you repeatedly do today will eventually become the life you live tomorrow.

Protect your health. It gives you the time and energy to do everything else.

2. Choose Your Friends Wisely

Bad company corrupts good morals.

The people you spend time with will influence your thinking, habits, standards, and eventually your future.

“If you hang around nine broke people, you will become the tenth. If you hang around nine smokers, you will become the tenth.” —John Hope

Choose friends who encourage you to become better.

Spend time with people who work, learn, give, save, invest, dream, build, and take responsibility for their lives.

3. Become a Lifelong Learner

Never stop learning.

And especially, read books. Don’t read for the sake of reading. Read from people who become your mentors. Read from people who have mastered the subject they are writing about.

Read biographies and autobiographies. Read history. Read about business, money, leadership, relationships, faith, communication, and the lives of people who accomplished extraordinary things.

Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Carnegie understood this. Their love of reading and learning helped take them to the most influential people of their time.

Stay curious. Ask questions. Listen to people who know things you don’t know. Your income will grow to the extent that you grow.

Learn to communicate.

Learn to listen.

Learn to sell.

Learn to negotiate.

Learn to lead.

Learn to speak in front of people.

Learn to solve problems.

Learn to write.

Learn people skills.

Build a library in your house.

4. Follow Your Strengths

Figure out what you’re naturally good at.

What are your strengths? What comes naturally to you? What do other people consistently recognize in you?

Develop your gifts.

Acquire specialized knowledge around your strengths. Practice. Study. Find mentors. Become exceptionally good at something useful.

You don’t have to be great at everything.

Find the intersection between what you’re gifted at, what you enjoy, what helps other people, and what people are willing to pay for.

Then become enthusiastic and excellent at it.

Create a vision statement—your why. Why are you on the planet? What are you called to do that no one else can do?

Know your core values. Don’t invent them; identify them. Your core values are who you are. Culture is what you do.

Does what you do line up with who you are?

5. Live Beneath Your Means

Learn to live on less than you earn.

Don’t increase your lifestyle every time your income increases. Invest the increase.

Be particularly careful about your two largest expenses: your house and your vehicles.

Save money. Avoid unnecessary debt. Buy things you can afford. Give yourself financial breathing room.

Don’t borrow money for things that depreciate. Buy assets.

6. Become Valuable at Work

Be enthusiastic about your work.

Figure out what your boss and customers need. Learn what problems need solving. Become dependable. Take responsibility.

Try to become your boss’s right-hand person.

Make yourself valuable.

You don’t get paid by the hour. You get paid by the value you bring.

Don’t concentrate on getting paid more; concentrate on becoming worth more.

Work overtime. Start a business—especially a simple service business that requires very little money to begin. Don’t quit your job. Invest the extra money.

Be worth more than your salary. Offer more value than what people pay you.

Work harder on yourself than you do at your job. Invest in yourself.

Have hobbies that are productive. Cooking and landscaping are what we love, and they improve our lives and our family.

7. Invest at Least 20%

Invest at least 20% of your income.

Invest in S&P 500 index funds.

Don’t try to get rich overnight.

Invest regularly and give compound growth time to work.

Starting young is enormously powerful because your money starts earning money while you sleep.

Einstein said, “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.”

8. Build Credit and Become a Homeowner

Protect your credit.

Pay your bills on time. Don’t borrow more than you can afford. Understand how credit works and build a strong credit history.

Own your own home.

Start small.

One strategy I particularly like is to buy the worst house on the best block you can afford.

Learn how to repair it. Improve it. Sell it in two years and put the profit into your next home. Repeat again and again.

9. Create a Team of Experts

Benjamin Franklin created the Junto—a group of people who met regularly to discuss ideas, business, philosophy, personal improvement, and ways they could help one another and their community.

Create your own version of the Junto.

Find mentors. Join organizations. Network. Have one-to-one conversations.

Surround yourself with lifelong learners, readers, thinkers, builders, entrepreneurs, leaders, and givers.

Networking isn’t about collecting contacts.

It’s about building genuine relationships where people learn from one another, challenge one another, help one another, and open doors for one another.

In five years, you will be the same person except for the books you read and the people you meet.

Know your weaknesses and meet people whose strengths are your weaknesses.

10. Choose Your Mate Wisely

Don’t ask for a good mate; become the type of mate you want to have.

Look for character.

Look for kindness, loyalty, faith, work ethic, wisdom, shared values, and someone willing to grow with you.

Do not be unequally yoked.

11. Treasure Our Family

Help one another when someone is struggling. Forgive one another when disagreements happen.

And especially, treasure your relationships with your siblings and cousins.

That’s the reason we created Cousins Camp.

In our family, Grandma has been the glue that holds our family together.

Someday, that responsibility will belong to your generation.

Be willing to be that person.

12. Have the Faith of God

God spoke the world into existence. With that same spirit of faith, we speak our world into existence.

Death and life are in the power of your tongue. Only speak the words that you want to come into your reality.

God is love. Walk in love. Don’t judge. Forgive first—and first, forgive yourself.

God is a giver. Be in His class. Be a giver.

Give and you shall receive. It is better to give than to receive.

If you’re a guest in someone’s home, act like the host. When they clean up, help them. Don’t ask; just do it.

Leave things better than you found them.

Have an abundance mindset, not a lack mindset.

Be slow to anger and swift to forgive.

13. Set Goals

If you want something tomorrow that you don’t have today, do something today that you didn’t do yesterday.

Tell me your goals and I am happy. Tell me what you are going to do to reach them and I am thrilled.

Write down your goals and your desires.

Don’t despise small beginnings. Everything starts small, invisible, and on the inside.

A seed is small and hides inside the dirt. The changes are small and invisible.

That is how God works.

14. Take Responsibility for Your Life

Your life is ultimately your responsibility.

Don’t spend your life blaming your parents, your employer, the economy, the government, your circumstances, or other people.

Life won’t always be fair.

Things will happen that you didn’t cause and cannot control.

But you can control what you do next.

Be bigger than your mistakes. Learn from them.

Protect your time. Don’t be idle or lazy.

Don’t complain. God hates complaining!

15. Build a Legacy

Everyone will leave this planet. What will you leave behind?

Don’t only ask yourself what job or business you will have. Ask yourself, “What is my service to God going to be?”

When you serve people, you serve God.

Don’t work only for money. Money will be a result of what you do. The more value you give, the more money you will receive.

Your legacy will not be your accomplishments. Your legacy will be the lives you touch through your accomplishments.

Build a life worth passing on.

Learn. Work. Give. Invest. Love your family. Walk in faith. Leave people and places better than you found them.

With love,Robert