38 Lessons Before My 38th Birthday

Family, craft, habits, community, health, values. Lessons for living intentionally.

I’m turning 38 this week. It’s the first time in my 30s that I feel “old”. Well thats half true. When I turned 20, on a trip in rural Nicaragua, I felt old. But like “cool” old.

This week I’m doing something a bit different. Not unhinged per se, but less “formal” than usual. I’m documenting 38 lessons across the areas of my life that matter the most to me.

Family. Craft. Habits. Community. Health. Values & Wealth.

Nothing here is earth shattering. It’s a mix of what I’ve learned that’s helping me live a full life. Take what’s helpful. Discard the rest like crumbs off the table, no offense taken. Maybe this is my own version of a “birthday card” to myself.

Happy 38th to me, and happy 38 lessons to you lucky readers.

Some of these are lessons I live by. Some I’m trying hard to put into practice (and fail). Some are aspirational.

Enjoy!

Up first is Family. The biggest “WHY” behind anything I do.

Family

1. The week stops on Friday night, complaining and all. Friday night dinner is the one thing in our week that stops, and everything gets prepped ahead (ahead meaning at least 10 minutes BEFORE said dinner time), so that when we sit down it’s mostly grape juice, bread, the blessings, talking and a whole lot of complaining. I grew up with Friday night dinner being a non-negotiable. We all had to be home for it, or join at a family friend’s. Not optional. No birthday party, movie night or hanging at a friend’s house was allowed to replace it.

What I remember from being a kid is that the week would be crazy, crazy, crazy, and then it would stop, and suddenly everything was quiet. I don’t have that quiet yet because my kids are little and LOUD, but I’m sure/hope it’ll come.

2. Be there for bedtime, and tell them stories about when we were little. Bedtime is one of those things so many parents struggle with, and yet when I’m not there for it, I miss it. Call me crazy, I know, but being there almost every night matters to me. My husband started this new tradition where he tells the kids his own crazy stories from when he was a kid. They love these and want them more than books. The only problem is that my said “retold” childhood stories are boring compared to his, so I’m often kicked out. All to say, I’ve made career choices, which is hard as a post-MBA mom, to be home for almost every bedtime.

3. Put the phone down, and make sure they notice. I try not to have my phone out when I’m with them, because if I’m telling them sitting on screens isn’t great, then I shouldn’t be doing it in their face, right? Also, I can only imagine what they see when they look up. Me just staring into the void, not present. I don’t want that to be the picture they remember. When my six-year-old says “hey, get off your phone,” it makes me happier than almost anything. He noticed. That’s THE point.

4. No screens during the week. Mostly. That’s the rule in our house. It’s the one people push back on the most and it’s the one I’d give up last. Except when they’re home sick, or we’re traveling, or on vacation, because I mean, how else does one feel better, travel or enjoy vacation? It’s all about balance.

5. Let them see you read. Stacks of books around the house, trips to the library together, and me reading on weekends. It may mean I max out the holds allowed by the Chicago Public Library (guilty) and have 10-15 checked out at a time (guilty again), but I know they’re watching me. So I read, real physical books, as often as possible.

6. Let them watch you build something hard. I want my kids to be proud of my work, and not because of what it pays, but because they saw me care about something, be bad at it, and keep going anyway. Which is exactly what these days feel like, though I’m a lot less bored than I was in tech and finance. Part of why I like writing this newsletter is that it’s documentation, and it’ll still be here when they’re old enough to read it. Hopefully they think I’m cool enough to read said documentation.

(Also, yes I did just write Not X But Y naturally - because that is what happens to one when they read too much AI written content).

7. Say sorry out loud. When I’ve done something that isn’t my best, I go back and own it. Not a vague “sorry if,” an actual “sorry I did X”. I’m big on internal locus of control and I try to teach them to take accountability instead of blaming others. So I try to model it myself.

When I've done something that isn't my best, I go back and own it. Not a vague "sorry if," an actual "sorry I did X."

8. Teach the cup half full, even about a wrongly peeled banana. When something goes wrong, which inevitably it does (and yes, sometimes it is a wrongly peeled banana, IYKYK), I try to give them the cup half full version. Not to talk them out of the feeling. Just to flip it and show them what the optimistic read is.

9. Celebrate on purpose. Make the trip, write the card, take the picture. I’m not a very emotional person, which is exactly why I have to be intentional about this. Getting to family for occasions is expensive. And exhausting. And still almost always worth it. And I’ve come around to kinda liking the printed photo albums, which 28-year-old me would have found hilarious. My kids love them even more.

10. Be at the school events. All of the MANY school events. Grandparents day, because we don’t have family in Chicago. The class parties. My parents always showed up even though they had busy work lives, and I remember that. So I show up to every one.

11. Marry someone who has the same value system. Plans change constantly and ours have changed plenty. Chicago nine years later was NOT in the plans, trust me. What’s mattered most is that my husband and I have the same values. Not necessarily the same goals. Values. This matters 10x more than you may think, especially once you start raising kids and see how values trickles in, FAST.

Craft

I say craft on purpose, and not work. Craft is the work you enjoy, that gives you meaning, that you’re good at and want to get better at just because. It’s hard to find, and sometimes there’s a long road from work to craft. Work is where you show up every day, you’re decent (maybe great) at the job, the paycheck comes (sometimes it’s a BIG one), you go home, and you don’t think about it again until Monday. Unless the stress carries over. Craft vs work. Same hours. Completely different life and meaning.

12. The same activity can be work or craft depending on what it’s about. I used to have to write essays at school, in French, Hebrew and English. All about topics I didn’t care about, and I sucked at it. It stressed me out. Getting a B was a big deal compared to math and science where A+s were my jam. But now I write about things I actually believe and am living through, in my own voice. That makes it fun. My ability maybe changed slightly, but my why is a lot deeper. Which makes it craft and not work.

The same activity can be work or craft depending on what it’s about.

13. When someone laughs at my goals, I take the useful half. An older operating partner once laughed at me for wanting to build a certain business model. I said something like “I know that’s hard, but I may as well try,” and laughed it off. There was truth in what he was saying. People laugh off my big goals for two reasons. The first is that they see a real obstacle I haven’t seen yet, or am ignoring. The second is that they don’t know what I’m capable of. So now I go looking for the blockers I can’t see, and I ignore their read on what I can do.

14. Think 10x, even when it makes people uncomfortable. Borrowed from Benjamin Hardy’s 10x Is Easier Than 2x, which I highly recommend you read. Working out the next small step is useful for figuring out what has to happen. It just shouldn’t be the goal.

15. Grind in spurts. I did the grind in M&A advisory and I was SO exhausted. Tech I enjoyed a lot more because I was operating, though it was a little too slow-paced for me. I believe in a balance, meaning going very hard for a stretch is fine. Working long hours for the sake of working “late” is dumb.

16. Clear, measurable goals keep my time in check. Not willpower. I spent 5+ years operating in scorecards, KPIs, OKRs, EOS rocks (IYKYK), and what I miss about all of that is knowing whether the week was on or off track.

17. Working for yourself is really hard and I struggle with it every single day. I have rules about my mornings. Ideally no calls before 11am if I can swing it, nothing personal before 3pm (think appointments, the to-do list). From the outside it probably looks like a luxury, but it’s what keeps me disciplined. Some weeks I’m not good at holding it.

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Habits

18. My whole system is one habit stack, and it runs at night. Skincare (thanks, Emily), then reading, then the journal, and in the journal three gains and three priorities and then what I’m grateful for, then a few quiet minutes of meditation (which is really me just listening to calming ocean sounds). The three gains come from The Gap and the Gain and they’re small on purpose. That small momentum helps me see progress on days when I’m TIRED. The three priorities are for tomorrow, and sometimes I hit them and sometimes I don’t. But I get in bed knowing roughly what tomorrow is “supposed” to be, and I’ve wound down.

19. Saying yes to everything is like doing a lot of nothing. I’m not on school boards. I’m not volunteering for everything. When I say yes now it’s because I believe in it and think I can add real value. Saying no is the newest skill I’ve had to build. There will be time for those activities, but this is just not the season for it.

Saying yes to everything is like doing a lot of nothing.

20. Hours don’t equal productivity. Not a new idea, I know. I’m listing it because I spent YEARS living like the opposite was true, and what finally worked was to stop counting hours and start noticing whether I was in flow or just present. Flow for the win. Hours for the loss.

21. Walk for ten minutes with nothing in your ears. Ten or fifteen if I’m lucky, ideally before I sit down to work, and no phone, no headphones, no podcast. That way it can be quiet (minus the street noise).

22. My office used to be a closet. A really messy one. This weekend my husband redid it and now it’s a proper working space. I hate clutter. I’m always pushing things out of the house. Having less really is having more, and it turns out that’s true about a lot more than closets.

Community

23. Sending a meal when someone is going through something matters. A LOT. After my first was born it was hard, and we’d just moved, and my community put together a meal train and food arrived at the door for WEEKS. I barely knew some of them. I do it for other people now when I can.

24. Being part of something bigger gives me something to fall back on. I never know which week I’m going to need the extra support, especially living in a city with no family. Which is exactly why I try to show up and build it when I don’t need it.

25. Different people plug into different pockets of my life. Some friendships are professional, some are personal, some are extensions of the kids and school life. Friendships don’t need to be all the things all the time, and realizing different ones serve different purposes has been freeing.

Friendships don't need to be all the things all the time.

26. My kids are learning to talk to adults and have no idea it’s happening. The Friday nights I remember most from growing up were the ones with other people there, because that’s where I learned to hold a conversation with someone much older than me and someone much younger than me in the same hour. My kids are getting that now, which is the best.

Nothing like some fresh air and a view to reset.

Health

27. Health is a lot more than my macros and how much I can lift. It’s my mental health, my spiritual health, my anxiety level, my sleep. I spent a long time measuring the two things that were easiest to measure.

Health is a lot more than my macros and how much I can lift. It’s my mental health, my spiritual health, my anxiety level, my sleep.

28. I can’t keep doing the same things. I don’t train the way I used to, mostly because things just hurt more now. Being stubborn about my old plan didn’t serve me well, so I’ve adjusted to what my body needs now. Also, a healing broken toe doesn’t help.

29. The same bedtime routine beats the number of hours, with a caveat. My ideal is nine, I’m getting seven to eight, but I get in bed at about the same time every night. Doing said boring routine above. Consistency of when I get into bed matters more than how much I sleep. Mostly.

30. Loosen the food rules. I used to be a lot more restricted about it (IYKYK) and now I watch macros at a high level and stop there. I’m both healthier AND significantly less annoying to have dinner with. Pass the pasta, please?

31. Almost entirely off social media. Except LinkedIn. I cut TV and I’m still working on the scrolling (LinkedIn is my one guilty pleasure). These two have done more for my attention than any productivity system I’ve ever tried.

Values and wealth

32. Having less is really having more. We carry so much stress from wanting more, and more, and more. So many of our problems could be solved by wanting less.

So many of our problems could be solved by wanting less.

33. There’s more than one kind of wealth and mine won’t look like yours. Time, money, health, family. I’ve been reading Sahil Bloom on this and I highly recommend it. What I’d add is that so much of it is circumstantial, so the real work is figuring out what’s good enough for YOU instead of measuring against what everyone else has.

34. Before anything big: do I want it, or do I think I’m supposed to have it? And how does it actually improve my quality of life? If it’s big I ask more than once, on different days. Ask my husband though, he may disagree and say I’m not actually Zen enough sometimes.

35. Save for the rainy day. Sounds vanilla. It is. Nothing better than having funds set aside, and still spending on the things that matter.

36. I pay more for less space, on purpose. We live in the city, which costs more and gets us less room. Suburbs folks, I know you all think we’re nuts. We do it because it gets us the most time with our kids before and after work. That’s our version of utility. Someone else’s is a big yard and a longer commute and that’s a completely fine answer, it’s just not ours. For now.

37. Spend on the things that keep paying me back. I spend money on being able to be with my kids, on being healthy, on doing work I care about. I spend a lot less on stuff, which feels great in the store and then, pretty reliably, doesn’t once it’s home.

38. Playing a game that isn’t mine is the dangerous one. I have to be very cognizant of not getting my priorities quietly mixed up with someone else’s. I see what others are building, how fast it “looks” like they’re moving. And sometimes I get jealous. But I try to remember that I’m playing my game, not theirs. Comparing shows up in so many places. Careers, money, health, fitness. The only fix I’ve found is asking myself whose game this is. I ask it more than I like to admit.

Playing a game that isn’t mine is the dangerous one.

That’s 38. Some of these are fresh, some I’ve known for years. And a good few are ones I wrote down hoping I can internalize them fully one day.

If five of them resonate with you, take those five and forget the other 33. That’s how I read other people’s lists too. But for some reason, to this day, I love a good list.

Save this one. And if you’ve got a birthday coming up, try writing your own version, it’s a much better exercise than I expected it to be.

I’ll see you after carpool.

Danielle