This answer is long. And it’s long because I want to share a comprehensive list of the lessons and insights gained from my 25 years on this earth so far. In essence, this is the best life advice I could give currently.
Everything I’ve written below is a culmination of my own words and the occasional quote from globally revered authors, billionaires, and historical mammoths like Anne Frank so you can receive some further confidence in the advice given. I wish I would have read this list years ago. But I suppose without the practical experience, failures, and time needed to understand these lessons - I wouldn’t appreciate them to the extent I do now.
I hope this helps you through whatever stage of life you’re in. And I hope you can always come back to these words to be reminded, find guidance, and understand that life always happens for us.
“Whatever you do, do it to your very best. The ocean is redder than its ever been. More than 400 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute, every year more than 6000 start ups apply to Y combinator, 10,000 people get advanced drama degrees, 125,000 people graduate with advanced MBAs. 300,000 books are published books in the United States alone. Even with 5 % unemployment within the U.S some 8,000,000 people are actively looking for work. No body has reason enough or time to give you the star treatment. No one wants to take the time or hassle to cultivate a diamond in the rough. If you want to be successful, you better be cut, polished, set, and sized to fit. What does that mean? At a very basic level, if you’re not amazing in every facet, you’re replaceable.” Ryan Holiday - The Perennial Seller.
Constantly reinvent yourself. Everything you perceive as your identity is just a fabrication made up of past experiences and judgements that people project onto you. In reality you are constantly and consistently free to be whoever we want. There is limitless potential if you understand how to recreate neural networks in your brain, rehearse scenarios in your mind, and then apply these in daily life.
Take the time to nurture your mind and body. If you don’t have a healthy inner world, and the physical energy to maintain your drive, the pursuit of any grand desire is going to become that much harder.
Always be willing to walk away. Clinging to people or situations out of fear is like desperately holding onto life even on the worst terms.
Create more than you consume. If you objectively look at a majority of people who’ve become “successful”, you’ll realise that they’ve done so in relation to something they created. It’s easy and effortless to consume endless amounts of content. But only creators are rewarded for their efforts.
Believe in yourself. The opinion you have of yourself determines your reality. And the extent of your self-belief will directly impact into your decisions which will ultimately influence your quality of life.
Bet on yourself: always be prepared to place a bet on yourself by heading in a direction that others fear. By making yourself feel the necessity to be creative, your mind will rise to the occasion.
Trust the process. Life happens for you, not to you. There is always something to be learnt and a way to constantly evolve irregardless of what happens.
Harness the power of compounding by building on your knowledge and getting 1% smarter every day through fields like investing, coding, languages, and soft skills.
Focus on and study things that don’t change or change very slowly over time — master the principles of human psychology, persuasion, communication and you can invent the tactics. Many people focus their time and energy on learning rapidly changing tactics, the minutiae, highly specific actions and pieces of advice without a broader context. As Sun Tzu once said “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” and Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”
Follow the path of worldly wisdom and focus on acquiring multidisciplinary knowledge across academic disciplines like psychology, mathematics, and biology.
Build a toolkit of mental models so that you can better understand reality and achieve your goals
Understand systems and learn how things work. In order to get what you want you have to understand how to get there, and in order to do that, you have to understand how things work — things like human behavior, economic systems, money, biology, and mathematics. Josh Kaufman explains this beautifully in The Personal MBA: “Every business fundamentally relies on two factors People and Systems…To understand how businesses work, you must have a firm understanding of how people tend to think and behave — how humans make decisions, act on those decisions, and communicate with others. Recent advances in psychology are revealing why people do the things they do, as well as how to improve our own behavior and work more effectively with others. Systems, on the other hand, are the invisible structures that hold every business together. At the core, every business is a collection of processes that can be reliably repeated to produce a particular result. By understanding the essentials of how complex systems work, it’s possible to find ways to improve existing systems, whether you’re dealing with a marketing campaign or an automotive assembly line.” The problem is that too many people have a very narrow focus — they master one piece of the puzzle, say marketing or finance, and think that has all the answers. But reality is messy and complex and interwoven. Most big events in our lives aren’t caused by one simple explanation; they are the result of an interplay of factors.
Don’t confine yourself to a single industry. Stand at the intersection of both science and art. It wasn’t until the rise of artists who lived at the intersection of arts and sciences, such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Pablo Picasso and Walt Disney, that innovations containing both aesthetic and technological factors contributed to societal achievements. Leonardo Da Vinci lived in a time of cultural transition known as the Renaissance, an era of philosophical, scientific and religious “rebirth,” where the masses no longer accepted beliefs at face value and questioned the reasoning behind given theories. This new mindset gave rise to a curiosity about the origins of science and how art could demonstrate them. Da Vinci believed that “perception is the origin of all knowledge” and that “science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past.” Everything that Da Vinci observed of his surroundings, he sketched and theorized about in journals and codices scripted in his mirrored handwriting. He was the first of his kind to combine the keen eye of an artist to study the detail of his findings, and the curiosity of a scientist to approach his subjects with an open mind.
Pay attention. A person's actions show you what their words won't.
Move towards discomfort, resistance, and fear whenever possible. Diamonds are created under pressure. And it is during the moments when you’re feeling the most discomfort or resistance that you’re truly making progress.
Seek out opposing views. There are many paradoxes in life. But one of the most important is that it’s the questions we ask, not the answers, that pave the way for progress. So never stop asking, constantly research, seek out opposing opinions to test theories, and never assume that you or anyone else is correct at first glance. If you can learn to ask the question; “How do I know I’m right?” and back your findings up with factual evidence, you’ll eventually progress further than ever imagined.
Fail forward. Failure is not an impediment to success, but a necessary stepping stone. Cherish the moments you fail because they will give you incredibly valuable insights on where to improve.
Travel. “Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” ― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
Embrace nature. “The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.” ― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
Confront mortality: “In the face of our inevitable mortality we can do one of two things. We can attempt to avoid the thought at all costs, clinging to the illusion that we have all the time in the world. Or we can embrace this reality and confront it and accept it. Converting our consciousness of death into something positive and active. In adopting such a fearless philosophy perspective we can gain a sense of proportion. We can become able to seperate what is petty from what is truly important. Knowing our days to be numbered, we have a sense of urgency and mission. We can appreciate life all the more for its impermanence. If we can overcome the fear of death, then there is nothing left to fear. Find a way to accept and embrace death as part of being alive. Only from such a position can we start to overcome our fear of mortality and all the smaller fears plaguing our lives. ” Robert Greene.
Remain humble yet confident. Know your worth.
Give more than you receive. The world will be kinder to you for it.
Above all else, always, always, always have fun. You’ll only have one shot at life so its better to spend your time enjoying the ride while it lasts!