29 for 29
Hard-Won Truths and Reminders to Remember
I turned 29 yesterday.
Here are 29 notes to myself—lessons, themes, and thoughts—I’m taking into my 30th year. May they serve you well.
The meaning of life is to enjoy the passage of time.
If you have one foot in the past and one in the future, you’re pissing on the present.
Action is the antidote to anxiety.
The future is less scary when you’re moving toward it.
Almost everything is either a good time or good story.
You get rewarded in public for what you practice in private.
Consistency won’t guarantee success, but not being consistent will guarantee you won’t find it.
Results are determined by intensity in the short-term and consistency in the long-term.
Boredom of routine is a tax on long-term success.
Our greatest fear is in our highest possibility.
If you were the main character in the movie of your life, what would the audience be screaming at you to do?
Without the Joker, who’s the Batman?
Relish the chance to prove yourself.
It’s better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
Do more things that make you feel more like you.
Authenticity is connective tissue.
Don’t aim for average.
Normal people get normal results.
Weird people get weird results.
You can’t be spectacular and fit in.
Self-esteem is the product of performing estimable acts.
Those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
People don’t want to hear what they want to hear.
They want to hear what you actually think.
You’re not for everyone and not everyone’s entitled to have you in their life.
Most people want you to do well, just not better than them.
There are real friends and deal friends.
What you’re not changing, you’re choosing.
How are you complicit in creating the conditions you say you don’t want?
The phoenix has to burn before it can rise.
You don’t give 100% because you’re afraid of what will happen if you do and still fail, but it’s better to find out.
Stress + Rest = Growth
There’s a time for grit and a time for grace, a time for striving and a time for surrendering.
Adaptation occurs during recovery, not stimulus, though we need both.
The stress of trying to be perfect is killing you more quickly than your imperfections.
Overthinking creates more problems than it solves.
General ambition gives you anxiety. Specific ambition gives you direction.
You can’t hit a target you can’t see.
Dreams, when avoided, become regrets.
It’s not what you do, it’s who you are.
One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.
You don’t stop laughing when you grow old. You grow old when you stop laughing.
Attractive people are comfortable in their own skin, know where they’re going, and have fun getting there.
Be someone you’d want to have a beer with.
Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.
Make the implicit explicit.
There’s greater fulfillment in the journey of pursuing goals than in the moment of achieving them.
The climb acclimatizes you and prepares you survive at the summit.
The sides of the mountain sustain life, not the top.
The ironic tragedy is that life has to be lived forward but only makes sense in reverse.
The dots only connect looking backward.
Failure sets the stage for growth.
If you know the result of the experiment before you conduct it, it’s not an experiment.
There has to be a tolerance for failure when innovating.
Innovation must be followed by “this might not work.”
Learning comes from the edges.
We know our balance through polarity.
Happiness = Reality - Expectations.
Never let the quest for more distract from the beauty of enough.
Expectations are your biggest liability.
Success is the degree to which you discover inner peace and freedom.
Psychology’s more contagious than the flu.
It’s okay to choose beliefs because they’re useful, not because they’re necessarily true.
If your body is made up of things you put into your mouth, your mind is made of things you put into your eyes and ears.
Your content diet should be spirulina for your soul, not fast food for your amygdala.
Balance doesn’t exist in the micro.
Rich is having passive income that’s greater than your burn.
But there five types of wealth—time, social, mental, physical, and financial.
You can have it all, just not all at once.
Water your grass instead of obsessing about how everyone else’s looks.
We intend to measure what we care about, but we end up caring about what we can measure.
Pay attention to the right scoreboard.
Judge a tree by its fruit.
What you work on is more important than how hard you work.
Effectiveness is more important than busyness.
Doing good is more important than looking good.
That which is meant for me will always find me.
The universe doesn’t give you what you want, it gives you who you are.
As you start to walk the way, the way appears.
There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
We need to be reminded more than we need to be taught.
You have the answers.
You haven’t asked the right questions.
Reality doesn’t need you to operate it.
Let go or be dragged.
What you resist persists.
What are you unwilling to feel?
Problems are a feature of life, not a bug.
Never fear a storm, learn to dance in the rain.
The wound is the place the light enters you.
Embrace it all.
If you numb the bad, you numb the good.
Both ends of the spectrum expand at the same time.
Your leaves will stretch to heaven to the extent that your roots reach down to hell. And the gates of hell are locked from the inside.
If one of these landed, I’d love to hear which one.
Inspired by Sahil Bloom, Chris Williamson, George Mack, Liz Gilbert, Prof G, Hormozi, Tara Brach, Rumi, Seth Godin, Jimmy Carr, Neil Strauss, Robert Glover, Andrew Garfield, Aron Ralston, and Paulo Coelho.
“What you’re not changing, you’re choosing.” That one is especially impactful… thx! Happy birthday, Adam!
I keep going back to #13 and #25
And on #1, I’d suggest “A secret of life” to replace “The meaning of life…”
Reminds me of the time I wrote 77 things about my dad (on his 77th bday)….He had 3 years left at that point. I hope he reread them a few times…