Live this day as if it were your last, occasionally ditch responsibility to belt out. Live this year as if it were your last, prioritize without going crazy. Live this day as if it were your first, notice things you've come to ignore. Live this day as if you were living it for the second time, skip the dumb decisions.
Eric BarkerOver-optimization is a curse, loosen up a bit on unimportant areas to stay sane. You decide to disregard the warnings from your elders and learn the hard lessons the hard way yourself, but you are not an exception to the rules. How charismatic do you want to be? Do you want to feel interesting or make others feel interesting? If more money wouldn't change your daily life, you are already rich. Do not become an insatiable beast. Grow from doing to thinking, even if being busy is more satisfying than being effective, as the goal is to move things forward no matter how. What are you working hard for? You are what you pretend to be so don't pretend and change your mind as you grow regardless of the socially expected consistency. You appear needy every time you try to impress others instead of focusing on fulfilling yourself. The big wins are the little ones like celebrating with people you care about. Can you be unapologetic yourself with your partner and how would you react if someone said you look like them? Your relationship with your partner is your safest refuge, marry someone you is grateful for who you are.
Chris WilliamsonYou will go against your values, what matters is how you respond. How will you react once you realize you screwed up? Focus on what comes next. Who you surround yourself with matters more than you think. You become the five people you spend the most time with, it's unlikely that you'll be the holdout. Learn how to care deeply but be able to let go. Drive is important but it will also get in the way. You can go all in but not all the time, you need more than one room in your identity house. Separate your identify from what you do, otherwise anytime you fail at it will feel like a failure of your entire self. Embrace your complexity, what you do is what you care about, not what you are. Don’t chase accolades, achievements, and medals as it’s all bullshit and it's never enough. When we tip too far to being driven by the external, we languish instead of thrive. Accolades are byproducts to finding things that interest you. Remind yourself of your deep principles, don’t rely on others to tell you what matters. Everyone has principles when life is easy, it’s when you are challenged that having a firm foundation will pay off. Life works out if you let it, don’t force things or you'll become anxious. All you can do is do the work to put yourself in a position to succeed and see what’s happens next. Embrace the messiness as both life and yourself are complicated and full of contradictions. If you try to make every brushstroke perfect, you’ll end up with something stiff and lifeless. It’s in the imperfections that we find our true selves. You are the author of your story, don’t let others define your narrative. The bad makes the good better holds true. Well-being has more to do with interpreting meaning in your life than with interpreting life as turning out well without a stated reason. No one gives a shit, you are just running around in circles or writing words on a page. Your actions should be important to you, not to anyone else. You get to decide how much value you assign to each craft you undertake. Explore more and go broad, we need breadth as much as depth. If you start with a narrow foundation, you’ll be limited in what you can build on top. It’s in the exploration that we discover who we are.
Steve Magness