Life Lessons (2022)

Each year, the process of looking in the rearview mirror for a few weeks allows me to squeeze every last drop of joyful juice from the year. It reminds me that it is not the future, rather the past that truly invigorates me, as I reflect on how far I’ve come in the last 363 days.

Living:

1. The endings we think we don’t want are usually the beginnings we didn’t know we needed
2. Being right is overrated, there’s far more value in learning to understand others’ viewpoints 
3. Feedback is neutral (not positive/negative)—it’s about what’s holding you back more than it’s about “you” 
4. Don’t wait for the storm to pass, dance in the rain
5. What you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days
6. The only productive way to answer, “what should I do now?” is to first tackle the question of “who do I want to become?”
7. Fun is the intersection of playfulness, flow, and connection 
8. The most practical skill in life is learning to do things when you don’t feel like doing them. Anyone can do it when it’s easy, but most people drop out the minute easy stops
9. We make our own luck 
10. You can’t think yourself into a certain mood;if you’re waiting till you feel like doing something, chances are you’ll never do it
11. The caption of all selfies is, “I exist, right?” 
12. When you think you’re fucked, you’re only 45% fucked (14 peaks) 
13. Train yourself to live in discomfort 
14. It is a burden to have perfectionism and winning as the core determining factors of your self-worth 
15. Part of the meaning of life is searching for the meaning of life
16. What is happening in your external life is a reflection of what’s happening inside yourself
17. Invest in your bed and your shoes because when you’re not in one, you’ll be in the other 
18. Build a life that you want instead of settling for the life you have 
19. There are no dumb questions because whoever is asking the question, it’s important to them 
20. Don’t try to be someone. Find the thing that is so engaging it makes you forget yourself

Relationships:

1. You know who your real friends are by who’s standing by your side & there to support you when you’re at your worst, not when you’re at your best.
2. Being late is an unspoken message that your time is more important than others
3. Labels are just putting people into filing drawers 
4. Releasing relationships—People will forget what you say. Forget what you do. But they will never forget how you make them feel—if you leave interactions w people not feeling good, that’s your body’s intelligence, listen to it
5. Uncommunicated expectations are pre-meditated resentments 

Business:

1. The lifelong maturation of every investor starts with absorbing almost everything and ends with filtering almost everything
2. When you lead, your job is to create more leaders, not more followers
3. Productivity is often a distraction. Don’t aim for better ways to get through your tasks, rather aim for better tasks that you never want to stop doing
4. Ask anyone you admire—their lucky breaks often happened on a detour from their main goal, so embrace detours. Life is not a straight line for anyone
5. If you repeated what you did today 365 more times will you be where you want to be next year?
6. The greatest risk is not taking one 
7. People are much more thinking lon-term when they feel good about the short-term and have stability 
8. Be cautious about getting really good at doing things that should never have been done in the first place 
9. Teach people how to think about problem solving vs. giving them answers 
10. Action produces information; if youre stuck or unsure what to do, take action; even if you do the wrong thing you might realize the thing that should have been doing instead
11. Quality is a great place to hide if you want to preserve your perfectionism

Time & Energy: 

1. Too many yes’s = time & energy management death by 1,000 cuts
2. Efficiency is highly overrated; Goofing off is highly underrated. Regularly scheduled breaks, aimless adventures, hibernation, and time off are essential for top performance of any kind–the best work ethic requires a good rest ethic.
3. Focus your energy on one thing at a time until you achieve a level of reasonable competency or mastery 
4. The greatest productivity tool that exists is saying “NO” 
5. Self-flaggelation = self-obsession 
6. Make a choice, take risks, and stop worrying about the outcome—how much of your life have you ever truly predicted? 
7. Buy back your time by paying people to do things you don’t need to do
8. If you hit the snooze button, you have chosen 10 more minutes of horrible sleep over waking up and living your purpose
9. Attention is your main source of wealth, even more than time bc you can waste time by being distracted
10. When in doubt, keep the schedule, reduce the scope (James Clear) 

Health & Spiritual:

1. Life is a lot easier when you start by being best friends by yourself; know who you are and let it rip 
2. Alcohol is the only drug that if you don’t do it, people think there’s something wrong with you (A Huberman) 
3. A great way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on everything you find irritating in others
4. The further we are from ourselves, the shallower our relationships become
5. You will be judged on how well you treat those who can do nothing for you
6. The chief prevention to getting old is to remain curious 
7. “God” doesn’t care about your feelings, he cares about your character
8. Study of spirituality can remove you from your reality and help you gain another perspective that aids in questioning your belief systems and understanding of the world 
9. Mythology & religion are moral frameworks to help us live according to our values 
10. Breakthroughs almost never pay off in the moment, they take time to mature and for us to experience the payoff—it can be a long process
11. Trauma can travel and so can healing 
12. Learn to be in the process of transformation isntead of trying to be transformed—we don’t get to skip the creating and go straigh to the creation 

Art Credit: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/636485359827144334/