23 things I wish I knew when I was 23
① SAY NO. OFTEN.
Try to make everyone happy
and you end up sad
② NEVER SETTLE. EVER.
To thine own self be true,
And it must follow,
as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
-Shakespeare
③ TAKE ACTION. ALWAYS.
The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.
-Paulo Coelho
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
-Mark Twain
④ PRACTICE QUIET-WAITING-STILLNESS
It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up the space. By waiting we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness.
-Pema Chodron
A lot happens on a mountain—it hails and the winds come up, and it rains and snows. The sun gets very hot, clouds cross over, animals shit and piss on the mountain, and so do people. People leave their trash, and other people cleaned it up. Many things come and go on this mountain—but it just sits there.
-Pema Chodron
⑤ LISTEN TO & MEDITATE WITH PEMA CHÖDRÖN
Pema Chödrön's teachings are like a compass. She has an extraordinary gift for presenting the heart of the Buddha's message in a way that both challenges and inspires. Her words are a beacon of light, guiding us to face our fears and open our hearts in even the darkest of times.
-Tara Brach
⑥ LIVE LOUDLY-BOLDLY-MEANINGFULLY. NO EXCUSES.
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming WOW! WHAT A RIDE!.
-Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (1955-1967)
People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.
-Joseph Campbell
⑦ SPEND QUALITY TIME OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE
The more willing you are to step out of your comfort zone, the more comfortable you feel in your life. On the other hand, if you stay in the comfort zone all the time, it shrinks.
-Pema Chodron
The realest danger is being committed to comfort. Holed up all snug and warm in our comfort zone we don't risk anything. And when we don't take risks, when we stay in our comfort zone, when we hide, we’re taking the biggest risk of all. Our comfort zone is probably the most dangerous place we can be.
-Kevin Kelly
⑧ LOOK STRAIGHT INTO THE MIRROR & FACE EVERYTHING
Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there's anywhere to hide.
-Pema Chodron
Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.
-Pema Chodron
⑨ SEE THE IMPORTANT MESSAGES IN YOUR MISFORTUNES
Commencement speakers will typically also wish you good luck and extend good wishes to you. I will not do that, and I’ll tell you why. From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.
-Chief Justice John Roberts commencement speech at his son's Jr. High School graduation
①⓪ IT'S REALLY ONLY EVER ABOUT THE JOURNEY — THE RIDE IS ALL THERE IS
It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters in the end.
-Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Please know that DESTINATION is just another word for FINISH LINES - BEGINNINGS - ENDINGS & REPLAYS. It's all amorphous bullshit because the only thing that's actually real is the JOURNEY itself, i.e. THE RIDE IS ALL THERE IS
-me
①① GET TO KNOW FEAR AS A FRIEND & TEACHER, NOT AN ENEMY & MONSTER
Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.
-Pema Chodron
The hero and coward both feel fear, but the hero uses his fear and projects it onto his opponent whereas the coward runs. The fear is the same but it's what you do with it that matters.
-Cus Damato
①② YOU ARE NO BETTER THAN THE GUYS IN THE UGLY SUITS OR THE CHEAP SEATS
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
-Jordan Peterson
①③ IF YOU LISTEN TO THEM & DON'T DO YOU, EVENTUALLY YOU'LL HATE BOTH THEM & YOU
Stop thinking about what everyone else wants for you ‘cause eventually they’ll all fuck off and all you’ll be left with is whether you were true to yourself.
-Sidney Pierce, played by the beguiling Sophie Cookson in Netflix's excellent 2017 drama, Gypsy
①④ BE QUIET & HUMBLE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW AND LOUD & CURIOUS ABOUT WHAT YOU DON'T
Those who know do not speak;
Those who speak do not know
Pride goeth before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall.
-Prov. 16:18
Too much chatter sprains the soul
①⑤ SEED THE IDEA OF COMPOUND INTEREST OVER MANY AREAS OF YOUR LIFE & COMMIT DEEPLY TO IT
A fool and his money are soon parted.
-English Proverb
Save your money and your money will save you.
All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest
①⑥ THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS. RUSHING TO ANY DESTINATION IS THE SUREST WAY TO NEVER GET THERE
Give things the time they need the time to take.
-me
①⑦ CARING WHAT OTHERS THINK OF YOU IS THE SUREST SIGN THAT YOU DON'T THINK MUCH OF YOURSELF
The quality of your life will be shaped by who you want to impress.
-Morgan Housel
①⑧ READ JOAN DIDION'S CLASSIC ESSAY — SELF-RESPECT: ITS SOURCE, ITS POWER — AT LEAST ONCE EVERY YEAR
The late Joan Didion, one of my favorite writers of all-time, is an American treasure. She's also eminently quotable writer. Her 1961 Vanity Fair piece on self-respect — widely recognized as one of Didion's greatest essays— reads as fresh and relevant today as it was 60 years ago when it was first published. Below are some quotes I gathered from Didion's beautiful and powerful piece, along with notes I wrote contemporaneously while reading it (SEE NT1, NT2, NT3...)
Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself
-Joan Didion
Although to be driven back upon oneself is an uneasy affair at best....it seems to me now the one condition necessary to the beginnings of real self-respect
-Joan Didion
NT1: Here Didion makes a totem point. That the beginnings of true self-respect come NOT with self-adulation, self-congratulation, or self-respect itself, but rather when one loses his/her bearings, self-confidence, and relativistic positivity of their position or place in the wider world.
To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable home movie that documents one's failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for each screening
-Joan Didion
NT2: FCKG BRILLIANT!!
However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves
-Joan Didion
NT3: MY GOD was she a beautiful writer!
There is a common superstition that "self-respect" is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all.
-Joan Didion
People with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things.
-Joan Didion
NT4: Didion makes very clear the point that self-respect isn't some kind of end game we arrive at, that once achieved, forever stands between our bad or broken past selves and our enlightened future selves. Nor is having gained true self-respect a guarantee that our past behaviors, f*ck-ups, or indecencies are forever behind us.
To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which, for better or for worse, constitutes self-respect, is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.
-Joan Didion
①⑨ I'LL SHOW THEM ISN'T A GOAL OR A DESTINATION. IT'S JUST AN EXCUSE FOR NOT HAVING A REAL GOAL OR AN ACTUAL DESTINATION
The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.
-Marcus Aurelius
'I'll show them" is neither a goal or a destination;
It may be very motivating, but it doesn't give you anything or anywhere to aim.
-me
Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck. When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
-Dalai Lama
②⓪ IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP, THE LEAST YOU CAN DO IS GO AND TRY TO BE THAT
The true definition of hell is the you,
how you are, on the day you’re going to die,
meeting the you, you could have been
-Keith Raniere, psycho cult leader of NXIVM from HBO’s documentary series The Vow with a truly profound thought that bowls me over every time I think about it
②① SEE EVERYTHING YOU DO & EVERY DECISION YOU MAKE THROUGH THE LENS OF WHETHER YOUR 10 OR 80-YEAR OLD SELF WOULD BE PROUD
I'm terrified of becoming someone that would disappoint my younger self.
-Lex Fridman
I hear you Lex, I so hear you
②② THE RAZOR SHARP, DANGEROUSLY HOT EDGE OF RISK-TAKING YOU LEAST PAY ATTENTION TO — WHETHER TO THE UPSIDE OR DOWNSIDE — IS THE ONE MOST LIKELY TO CUT & BURN YOU
Success depends on the risks you take.
Survival depends on the risks you avoid.
-James Clear
②③ FRIENDSHIPS ARE VITALLY IMPORTANT, BUT IF YOU DON'T PRIORITIZE THE MOST IMPORTANT FRIENDSHIP OF THEM ALL — THE FRIENDSHIP WITH YOURSELF — YOU'RE LIKELY TO NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT HAVING ANY FRIENDS AT ALL
The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.
-Pema Chodron
When you have made good friends with yourself, your situation will be more friendly, too.
-Pema Chodron