Here are forty things I wish someone had beaten into my head years earlier — the kind of truths you usually only collect the slow, expensive way, one hard lesson at a time. Some of them will sting. Good. The ones that sting are usually the ones you needed. I'm not going to soften them, because a truth you can swallow comfortably usually isn't the truth — it's the polite version, and the polite version never changed anyone's life. Let's go.
Your relationship with others is a direct reflection of your relationship with yourself.
If you treat yourself poorly, you'll unconsciously seek out and tolerate people who treat you poorly too. If you treat yourself with dignity and respect, you'll only tolerate people who do the same. Fix the inside and the outside follows.
The only way to feel better about yourself is to do things worth feeling good about.
Respect is earned, not given. You cannot affirm your way to self-worth. You have to build it.
The only failure is not trying.
The only rejection is not asking. The only mistake is not risking anything. Success and failure are fuzzy concepts that only exist in your mind before you act, not after. Afterward, everything is a mixture of both. The one real failure is doing nothing.
No one is coming to save you.
No single thing will solve all your problems. No goal, no achievement, no relationship, no person will ever fix you. You will always feel mildly inadequate and somewhat dissatisfied. Nothing is wrong with you for feeling that way. On the contrary, it might be the most normal thing about you.
Be the partner you want to have.
Want someone healthy and fit? Be healthy and fit. Want someone loyal and trustworthy? Be loyal and trustworthy. To put it plainly: would you date you? If not, then that's a fucking problem — and it's yours to fix first.
The most valuable things in life compound over a long period of time.
Health, wealth, knowledge, confidence, relationships. These frustrate you when you're young because they're slow. But start building them early and never stop, and by your 30s and 40s you'll have an incredible life almost by default.
The sexy, exciting things are the opposite — they have brutal diminishing returns.
They start out incredibly fun, then fall off a cliff. Social media, casual sex, drugs and alcohol, video games, gambling, vacations, blow jobs. The first time is amazing, the second almost as good, and then it's all downhill. Well — except for the blow jobs.
If you're not turning down things that excite you, you're not focused enough on something that matters.
Our world overflows with stimulation and opportunity. If you aren't struggling to say no to good options, you haven't actually decided what's important to you.
Taking responsibility for all your problems alleviates more suffering than it creates.
Most people assume owning all their pain will make them feel worse. The opposite is true. The more responsibility you take, the more power you have to actually do something about it.
You give power to whoever you blame.
Blame someone else for your problems and you hand them control over your happiness and wellbeing. This is fucking stupid, so don't do it. It's not worth it.
If you have to tell someone you're something, you're not that something.
A rich man doesn't need to show people he's rich. A smart man doesn't need to tell people he's smart. A confident person doesn't have to prove it — he just is. Don't say it. Be it.
Motivation is not the cause of action, but the effect.
If you want to feel motivated, take the smallest possible action toward the thing, then let momentum carry you. Action first. Feelings follow.
Love is not the cause of commitment, but the effect.
You don't wait for a perfect relationship to commit. You commit to a person in order to create the relationship.
Passion is not the cause of good work, but the effect.
You don't wait until you find something you love. You get good at something, and the competence and agency you develop is what makes you passionate about it.
Everything comes with an inherent sacrifice.
The person you marry is the person you fight with. The house you buy is the house you repair. The dream job you take is the job you stress over. Whatever makes you feel good will inevitably also make you feel bad.
A happy life is not a life without stress.
It's a life of meaningful stress. The goal was never zero pressure. The goal is pressure that's worth it.
Don't treat exercise as an exchange — treat it as an investment.
You don't work out to earn a burger or lose a few pounds; that mindset dies fast. For every unit of energy you put in, you get several back — just spread out over weeks, months, and years. That's why a little every day beats the hell out of going hardcore once in a while.
Meditation makes everything else in life easier.
I suspected this early on, but I'm certain of it now. It's one of the most scientifically validated mental practices there is — less stress, better sleep, sharper focus, more wellbeing — and you can do it literally anywhere. I've been at it since I was 18, and few things have paid off more.
Trust people.
Most of them are good. You'll get hurt or embarrassed sometimes, but the alternative — a life of suspicion — is far worse.
There's no such thing as a life without problems.
Warren Buffett has money problems. A homeless man has money problems. Buffett's are just more desirable. Problems don't disappear — they get exchanged and upgraded as you grow. The solution to today's problem is the seed of tomorrow's.
Growth is rarely accompanied by joy and celebration.
Usually it's painful, because growth requires loss — of your old values, behaviors, loves, and identity. Change always carries a component of grief. So let yourself grieve.
Being "normal" is nothing to aspire to.
Statistically, a normal person is physically unhealthy, emotionally anxious and depressed, socially lonely, and financially in debt. Fuck being normal.
If you can't say no, your yeses mean nothing.
We are defined by what we give up, sacrifice, and reject. Sacrifice nothing, reject nothing, and you have no identity — you're just a reflection of the people around you. If you don't decide who you are, other people will decide for you.
Be careful how you define yourself.
Your identity is a self-built mental prison that condemns you to constantly seek proof of whatever you've decided to be. Define yourself as loosely and ambiguously as possible. You'll feel less defensive toward the world and stay willing to change when you need to.
Don't make assumptions about people.
You have no fucking idea what they've been through. And don't make assumptions about yourself either — the last person any of us is objective about is ourselves.
No one thinks about you as much as you think about yourself.
Whatever you're insecure about, 99% of people haven't even noticed — they're too busy thinking about themselves. That might sound depressing, but it's liberating: you're judged far less than you fear.
Confidence doesn't come from expecting success. It comes from being comfortable with failure.
There's a word for someone who needs to succeed at everything: a fucking narcissist.
Develop a willingness to be disliked.
It grants you the freedom to do what needs to be done, even when it's unpopular.
You can't be a life-changing presence to some people without being a complete joke to others.
Part of the price of having impact is attracting hate — and usually that hate is proportional to the impact.
Floss and wear sunscreen every day.
I know I sound like your mom. Trust me anyway. In 20 years you'll thank me.
Extraordinary results come from repeating ordinary actions over an unordinary amount of time.
Every overnight success is secretly the result of quietly working in obscurity for years, if not decades.
Choosing a partner is not about romance.
You're also choosing a confidant, counselor, career advisor, therapist, investor, teacher, travel buddy, roommate, best friend, and business partner. I'm not saying you should demand your partner be all these things — I'm saying they will become all of them whether you plan it or not. That's what a relationship is. So choose fucking wisely.
Don't overestimate romantic love.
Love doesn't fix relationship problems or make trust issues disappear. It's an amplifier — it makes a good relationship better and a bad one much worse. Love is beautiful when it works right. But on its own, love is not enough.
Trust is the currency of all relationships.
Every good relationship is built on years of trust. Every failed one fails because trust broke. Honesty and integrity are the backbone of a life of healthy relationships, and therefore of happiness. Dishonesty might buy short-term gains, but you're completely fucking yourself in the long run. So stop it.
If all your relationships have the same problem, then newsflash — you're the problem.
The common denominator in every room you've ever been in is you. Start there.
There's no such thing as a bad emotion — only a bad response to one.
Every emotion can be used constructively or destructively. One of the most useful skills you'll ever learn is how to channel your negative emotions constructively.
Mornings are the real shit.
I swore I'd never be the guy in bed by 9 on a Friday, or the guy up at 5 AM to hit the gym. But kids, I hate to break it to you — that guy was onto something.
You don't have to prove anything to anyone — including yourself.
Let me say it again for the people in the back. You don't have to prove anything to anyone. Including yourself.
Life advice is like clothing — try it on.
If it doesn't fit, discard it and try something else. Like clothing, bad advice becomes useless within a few weeks. But good advice will last you a lifetime.
Nothing meaningful is easy, and nothing easy is meaningful.
We think we'd love to have everything handed to us on a silver platter, but we don't appreciate what we didn't struggle for. So stop avoiding the difficult things — and go find the difficult things you actually enjoy.
It's never too late to change.
A friend once told me about his grandmother. When her husband died she was 62, and for the first time in her life she started taking piano lessons. She practiced all day, every day. The family assumed it was a phase for processing grief. Months passed. She kept playing. People wondered if something was wrong with her. They told her to give it up and face reality — she was old.
By her 90s she'd been playing every day for over 30 years — longer than most professional musicians have been alive. She'd mastered Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Vivaldi. Everyone who heard her swore she must have been a concert pianist in her youth. No one believed her when she said she took her first lesson at 62.
I love that story because it proves that even at an impractically old age, you still have more time left to learn something than most professionals at that thing have even been alive. Nearly everything worthwhile I've done, I started later than the people around me — and it never once mattered. The clock you think you're racing is mostly imaginary.
People email me all the time: "I'm 20, or 40, or 60, or 80 — is it too late? Can I change? Is there time?" The answer is always the same. It's never too late. There's always time. The only real question is how long you're going to keep making excuses and pretending there isn't.
The only question is when you'll start.