What I Wish I Knew at Eighteen: Real Advice from Real People on How To Live a Life Without Regrets

What I Wish I Knew is profound life advice for all of us who can’t quite get into self help.

My favorite review of these books is “They’re self-help for the rest of us, they’re stealth self-help. They’re life advice you can read on the train without everyone thinking you’re broken.”

Life just isn’t long enough to learn everything yourself through experimentation.

So stubbornly muddling through your days and ignoring the advice of people who have been there, done that and now know better is just plain stupid.

Yeah, so what? Why is it different to other collections of life advice?

I’m glad you asked – you cheeky thing. Because I know that most of us (yes, even me sometimes) can get a bit shirty and obnoxious when someone is telling us how to live our lives I provide the three or four tablespoons of sugar to help the medicine go down.  Once I’ve got all the incredible bits of advice from each person, I put down their incredible answers next to a (slightly) nerdy photo of each person in their younger days – complete with paisley flares, shoulder pads and gorgeous mullet hairdos – just so all this wisdom stays approachable and doesn’t take itself too seriously.

None of us have all the answers, but we’ve all got a few.

Unlike almost every other book of advice, What I Wish I Knew knows there’s always a ‘second opinion’ (and a third, and a fourth…) Anyone who says they’ve discovered “The One Big Answer to Life” is trying to sell you something. Nobody is an authority on everything. But virtually everyone is an expert at something. That’s why my books ask a millionaire how to make money, a woman who was a mother at 15 about self-reliance and a September 11 survivor on how to live every day as if it could be your last.

The What I Wish I Knew series is like having a team of specialists for every aspect of life.

All the most successful men and women in history understood the value of having a team of advisors around them. Everyone from steel magnate Dale Carnegie to “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” author Robert Kiyosaki have recommended surrounding yourself with a brains trust of experts because they knew they didn’t have all the answers. Henry Ford had advisors. Oprah has advisors. Even the President has a whole team around him to help him make decisions. Everyone has had experiences that have helped them discover a small piece of life’s puzzle. What I Wish I Knew puts almost 100 of these pieces together so that we can all stand back, get a better view of the big picture, and benefit from those who’ve boldly gone before us.

It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to do – build a house, get fit, start a business, find love, even just live a life that’s true to you – there’s always people who can help.

So often in life we pick up an effective skill, learn a valuable lesson or discover some indispensable piece of inside information and then think to ourselves: “Wow! I wish I knew about this earlier. I would have done things very differently.”

Imagine if you could get hold of this wisdom without the sweat, tears and embarrassment that usually accompanies its discovery. Better still, suppose you could access this extraordinary information up front, in one place, from people who have the specialized experience to back it up.

About The Authors
Marty Wilson is a Pharmacist turned Stand Up Comic turned Author and Speaker who encourages people to get to the end of their days and say 'Well, that was awesome."
Dan Gregory is the President and CEO of The Impossible Institute™, an innovation and engagement organisation founded to make what’s not… possibl