The below are 35 lessons for living, learning, thriving, and otherwise positioning oneself to derive the utmost quality from the time that’s been granted. May what’s meant to resonate, resonate.
Your future self does not benefit from you suffering for your suffering now. Focus on becoming the person that you'll be glad you focused on becoming when the suffering concludes.
Clarity clarifies. When you're clear on the current state, and on the fundamental criteria of the future state, a path can come into view.
The “contrarian” opinion might be exactly what someone needs to hear. When given the opportunity, voice it. Bonus: The messenger matters. You can say the right thing, but depending on the listener, you may not be the “right person” saying it. (As this can be difficult to detect with precision, express conscientiously.)
Money is a tool to create preferred experiences and accelerate outcomes. Use it.
How to feel like you're winning: Put yourself in more situations that align to your strengths. The more often you feel like you're winning, the more likely it is, that you actually are, or will.
Overcome your lower self by capturing the attention of your higher self. Read more about a compelling topic of interest. Go on a walk instead of sitting idly. Listen to a piece of music that stirs creativity in you. Do what makes your higher self (e.g. the one most reflective of the better version of you) the dominant self.
You cannot persist without authentic interest. The sustained pursuit of "harder" alternatives (exercise, deep learning, and so on) requires that they address something appealing to you.
Thrive through until the inevitable end of anything by filling that time with as much of what you fundamentally enjoy, appreciate, learn from, and are improved by in that context as possible.
Related, diligently create and pursue the conditions most conducive to your thriving.
Do not prematurely decide what people you love or wish to love will think about your experiences. Let them decide.
Build up a tolerance for the risks that come with prioritizing your direction. In other words, become okay with having to give a little less somewhere to give a little more elsewhere should that be what your trajectory presently requires.
Structure your life such that the realization of your goals is inevitable. [Note that the lesson is not: "set goals." It is, wholly and specifically, structure your life in service of those goals. i.e. daily and weekly routines, rules, parameters, and the like.]
Whatever "hard" thing you find yourself putting off, remember that most people aren't doing it. Most people aren't doing the hard things, which is why few people experience the fruits of those hard things.
Seemingly obvious and yet can't be overstated: Maintenance makes things easier. Endure a little "pain" regularly to avoid extensive pain semi regularly.
Impose external mechanisms of accountability to inhibit the tendency to delay the significant in favor of the immediately urgent and obvious. Schedule and publicize your priorities, intimately or broadly.
You are uniquely equipped to deal with whatever must be dealt with.
Don't underestimate the importance of protecting and preserving your constitution, the position from which you best operate. Sleep well. Fuel sufficiently. Adhere to the rhythms that aid in regular flourishing.
Action happens when the thought of not doing something is scarier than the thought of doing it. Effectiveness within your target timeline requires that you pull this sensation forward. “We are kept from our goals, not by obstacles, but by a clearer path to a lesser goal.” -Robert Brault
No amount of achievement will replace whatever's broken in you. Sit in that.
Don't be upset when people don't uphold expectations they never committed to.
Life is luck and competition. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can focus, wholly and completely, on being the best version of you, specifically. Being you is what’s sustainable.
Let tomorrow’s freedom be today’s fuel. You've gotten through it; operate from the place where you’ve gotten through it.
Strive to engage with others, and with life, as the best version of you would, exhausted, insecure, or otherwise. How others felt while interacting with you is what they'll remember, and not however it is you felt.
We would benefit from seeing life as a series of auditions, not dissimilar from what performers go through. Sometimes you get the gig [job, contract, insert-pursuit-here]; sometimes you don't. Onto what's next.
Do not underestimate the power of commitments. Something that requires your best tomorrow impels wise decisions today.
Overcoming anything starts with the belief that you can. You must believe the problem is solvable, approaching from this position accordingly.
Get [and remain] active in your own improvement. No one else will do this for you.
In any professional circumstance or quandary, doing the work that you can be proud of is a consistently-useful foundation.
Pick your mountain. Pick the mountain that, for you, the climbing itself gives more than it takes.
Be attentive to knowing when something is no longer psychologically beneficial; adjust accordingly.
What you seek is often on the other side of the process you're finding fatiguing.
Pressure breeds creativity. When there is no other option but to find a solution, neural pathways open up to do just that.
You will fall out of routine. It's the intention with which you resume it that matters.
When feeling uncertain, do that which you are consistently certain is a quality use of time—the cathartic hobby, a thought-expanding book, connecting with someone important to you, a workout. You can process and progress.
Become enamored with your life — what other choice do you have? "Love only that which falls to you and is spun as the thread of your destiny,” Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius said in Book VII of Meditations, “for what could be better suited to you?"