In the past months I’ve been thinking what about I’ve learned or am learning in my 31 years.

Here’s my 31 at 31.

1. Everything fades.

2. You will get old but you often learn to accept this too late.

3. A clean conscience is priceless.

4. Hope in God.

5. You’re never going to be at 100%. Learn to work through it and in spite of it.

6. You have to earn the right to be heard. Want to be credible? Study. Compelling? Get experience. Leave a legacy? Invest your life in people.

7. Take a break. Seriously.

8. Your opportunities tend to shrink when you stop learning, stop looking or stop trying.

9. Plans are always a moving target – life just happens.

10. Wherever you are… be there. Invest yourself in the moment; you will never get it back.

11. If you never disagree with anyone, you may be ignorant and don’t know exactly what you want or apathetic and never fight for it when you should. Neither leaves you feeling satisfied.

12. Beauty isn’t always pretty.

13. Appreciate your pastors as a gift. They work long hours especially on weekends; they work not to get noticed and often get shot with criticism; they never get promoted, are often are underappreciated and continue to serve without complaining. You would probably leave your job for less; they stay and consider it a calling.

14. Solve systems not symptoms.

15. Hard work doesn’t always pay off as you think it should; life in a fallen world isn’t fair that way. But nothing lasting ever came from doing nothing.

16. Take calculated risks and don’t be afraid to fail. Fear of failure stifles innovation, creativity and growth; your biggest regrets often come from the things you failed to do, not the things you ended up doing.

17. Sometimes you don’t have the answers because you have not yet learned how to ask the right questions.

18. (Silence)… You need that to stay humble, focused and sane.

19. Friends… You need them to help you stay humble, focused and sane.

20. Encourage generously. No one is “there” yet.

21. Learn what makes you feel happy at this point in life – and be specific. Where it’s not sinful, pursue and enjoy it as God’s gift to you for the moment.

22. Don’t get pigeonholed into one-dimensional stereotypes defined by your past, your background, your intellect, your physique, your personality, your skills, your status, your peers, your education, your job or what have you. These things may explain aspects about you, but don’t let them define you.

23. Be gracious to your parents.

24. God is the one uninterruptable. You can’t choose how and when He intervenes in your life. Never lose the wonder when He does.

25. Before you criticize others, offer them the courtesy of context. Your thoughts, words and actions have all been shaped in some way by where you’ve come from and where you are now.

26. Don’t let others define your limits for you, either by saying something to discourage you, or by saying nothing leaving you to discourage yourself.

27. Journal not just to help remember the past, but to help reflect on your future.

28. Say less, mean more.

29. Often you have to deal with how people feel before you can influence how they think and affect how they respond.

30. There is probably more grace at work in the world than we care to see; our problem is looking beyond the ways we would prefer to see God at work.

31. Don’t put too much trust in any one person’s advice. Your advisors are finite creatures and even the best ones are still learning.