In my opinion, the difficult part of your 20s is not a lack of opportunity. Quite the opposite actually. There are so many plausible lives you could live, and social media makes you watch all of them at once. “The Joneses” used to be your neighbors. Now they are algorithmically selected strangers building businesses, moving abroad, getting married, traveling full-time, climbing corporate ladders, and telling you why their path is the right one. And why yours is wrong.

Can we just agree that this is fu*king exhausting!?

Freedom sounds exciting until you realize that choosing one life means giving up another.

Every good life has a PRICE. In short, it’s all about tradeoffs. Which are you going to choose? Are you even aware of what you’re choosing?

Let’s get into it…

P — Proximity

Proximity is about the people and places you choose to keep close. Where you live affects far more than your commute; it shapes how often you see family, maintain friendships, build community, and show up for the people who matter to you.

Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, summarized one of the study’s clearest findings simply:

“Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.”

After following people across decades, the research consistently points toward the quality of our relationships as one of the strongest predictors of well-being.

Imagine you are offered a great job across the country. It pays more, advances your career, and gives you the chance to experience somewhere completely new. But it also means seeing your parents a few times a year instead of a few times a month, leaving close friends behind, or asking your partner to uproot their own life. That does not make moving the wrong decision. It simply means the opportunity comes with a price in proximity.

R — Risk

Risk is about the uncertainty you are willing to accept in exchange for a different future. The tricky part is that both action and inaction carry risk; staying put can be just as consequential as making the leap.

In The Defining Decade, psychologist Meg Jay argues that your 20s are a period of unusually high possibility, but also unusually high uncertainty. That is part of what makes the decade so formative: the choices you make around work, relationships, and identity can shape the direction of your adult life long before you feel completely ready.

Imagine you are deciding between staying in a stable job with good benefits and a clear path forward, or leaving for a smaller company where the role is more exciting but far less certain. One option carries the risk of instability. The other carries the risk of wondering whether you stayed comfortable for too long.

It’s important to understand your own personal risk tolerance here. Me? I am pretty risk adverse. Have a tendency to overthink…ALOT.

I — Income

Income is about what your money allows you to build, protect, and eventually choose. More is obviously useful, but higher income can also come with costs in time, stress, flexibility, or the freedom to pursue other parts of your life.

In The Psychology of Money (MY FAVORITE BOOK!), Morgan Housel argues that one of money’s greatest benefits is the control it can give you over your time. Wealth is valuable not only because of what you can buy, but because savings and financial margin create options: the ability to change jobs, take a risk, wait for the right opportunity, or simply say no.

Imagine choosing between a $120,000 job that demands 60-hour weeks and constant availability, or an $85,000 job that still lets you save comfortably while giving you evenings, weekends, and more flexibility. The higher salary may still be worth it, but the decision becomes more interesting once you ask what the additional $35,000 is buying—and what you are giving up to earn it.

C — Commitment

Commitment is about what you are willing to choose deeply enough that other possibilities begin to disappear. Keeping every option open can feel like freedom, but eventually a meaningful life requires choosing some paths at the expense of others. (HINT: I am struggling with this one big time right now)

Kierkegaard wrote extensively about the anxiety that comes with freedom and possibility. The more choices available to us, the more aware we become of everything we could be doing instead. But possibility alone is not a life. At some point, meaning requires commitment.

Marriage is an obvious example (I got married last Saturday! No pictures yet since I am writing this from the past XD). You can be completely confident in choosing someone and still recognize that the decision closes off other possible versions of your future. That does not make the commitment restrictive or wrong. The closing of possibilities is part of what opens up new possibilities.

E — Experience

Experience is about what you are willing to spend your time, money, and comfort on while certain opportunities are still available to you. Not every experience needs to be life-changing, but some things are simply easier to do in one season of life than another.

Seneca wrote in On the Shortness of Life that “it is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.” I don’t take that as a mandate to turn your 20s into some insane bucket-list competition. To me, it is simply a reminder that time is finite, and not every year of your life offers the same possibilities.

Imagine you have the opportunity to spend six months living abroad. Financially, staying home may be the smarter move. You could save more, stay closer to family, and keep your normal routine. But ten years from now, with kids, a mortgage, or different responsibilities, that same opportunity may become much harder to recreate.

Some decisions pay you in money. Others pay you in stories, skills, perspective, relationships, and a better understanding of yourself.

In Closing

If there is one thing all five parts of PRICE have in common, it is this:

There is no option without a tradeoff.

Proximity, Risk, Income, Commitment, Experience. Every path gives you something, and every path asks you to give something up.

I think this is where Aristotle’s idea of the Golden Mean still holds up so well. Life is rarely as binary as we want it to be. The answer is not always more money, more freedom, more risk, more stability, more experience. The “right” balance depends on who you are, what you value, and the season of life you are currently in.

left a great comment on the original Note that inspired this article. He moved from Pennsylvania to Ohio for a job, leaving behind family, friends, and everything familiar. The job eventually disappeared.

But Ohio is also where he met his wife.

As he put it:

“Giving up being comfortable in PA paid off in a way I never expected it would. It all started with a trade off.”

I love that because it captures something PRICE cannot calculate.

You can think through the risks. You can look at the money. You can consider who you are leaving behind, what you are committing to, and what experiences might come from the decision.

But eventually, you still have to choose.

There is no rulebook that tells you exactly where to live, who to become, how much money to make, which opportunity to take, or what your 20s are supposed to look like.

The best you can do is know yourself, understand what you are trading, and make choices that are aligned with what actually matters to you.

Then stop looking at everyone else’s life long enough to live your own.

Every good life has a PRICE.

Just make sure you are paying for one you actually want.

LET’S GO!!!

Essentially, two universes that were never supposed to occupy the same space begin to overlap. Their paths cross and collide.

The Marvel version usually ends with something slightly more catastrophic than what I have in mind for this article, but I’ve been thinking about the concept a lot lately because I think smaller versions of these collisions happen in our own lives all the time.

• You meet someone you otherwise would have never met.

• You try something that introduces you to an entirely different group of people.

• You learn a skill for one reason, only for it to become useful somewhere completely unrelated years later.

• Someone sends you an opportunity because a conversation you had six months ago made them think of you.

• A trip leads to a friendship. A friendship leads to an introduction. An introduction leads to an opportunity.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s call these collision points.

Not every collision changes your life. Most probably won’t, honestly.

But nearly every unexpected opportunity requires some kind of collision to happen first. Which leads me to the question:

How can you intentionally create more of them?

People | Who Do You Know?

People are probably the most obvious source of collision points.

A new person can introduce you to an idea, opportunity, community, or another person you never would have encountered on your own.

That does not mean treating every conversation like a networking opportunity.

It means being intentional about expanding your circles and actually maintaining the relationships you already have.

Some of the best opportunities I’ve had came through people who thought of me when I wasn’t in the room. Not because I had asked them for something, but because we had built enough of a relationship that my name naturally came to mind.

And one person rarely represents just one collision point.

They have their own friends, coworkers, experiences, interests, and networks. One genuine relationship can eventually connect you to dozens of things you could never have predicted.

So start simple:

• Talk to people outside your normal circle.

• Go to the event.

• Follow up after you meet someone.

• Introduce people who should know each other.

• Stay in touch even when you don’t need anything.

You never know which conversation will matter later.

Experiments | What Are You Trying?

Some collision points only become possible when you are willing to try something new.

You take the class. Start the project. Join the team. Visit the place. Publish the thing. Say yes to something slightly outside your normal routine.

You may not know where any of it will lead, and that is kind of the point.

I have written before that clarity rarely comes before experience. It usually comes because of it. Every experiment gives you new information about what you like, what you are good at, who you meet, and what might be worth pursuing next.

This does not mean saying yes to everything or constantly chasing novelty. It just means leaving enough room in your life for something new to happen.

So start simple:

• Try something you have been curious about.

• Apply even if you are not sure you will get it.

• Join a group, class, or event outside your usual circle.

• Share something you have been working on.

• Say yes to one opportunity you would normally overthink.

You do not need to know where every experiment leads before you begin it.

Quick side note: I’m using this article to stretch my creativity around a topic I’ll be presenting at my alma mater this November. The lecture itself will be much more academic, but I thought it would be fun to put a different twist on the same ideas here. Hopefully I can share that with you soon.

Range | What Can You Do?

The more skills and experiences you collect, the more places your path can intersect with opportunity.

A skill might begin in one part of your life and become valuable somewhere completely different later. Writing can improve how you communicate at work. Photography can change how you see design. Athletics can sharpen discipline and leadership.

I have written about this before as the power of crossing disciplines: the interesting part is often not the individual skill, but the combination of skills you build over time.

This does not mean becoming mediocre at 20 different things. It means building enough range that you can be useful in more than one kind of room.

So start simple:

• Learn one skill adjacent to what you already do.

• Read outside your normal interests or industry.

• Become a beginner at something again.

• Look for ways your existing skills can overlap.

• Follow curiosity when something genuinely interests you.

Sometimes the opportunity exists because you happen to be standing at the intersection.

Reputation | Who Thinks Of You When You’re Not In The Room?

Reputation is where collision points start happening without you having to create every one yourself.

Someone recommends you. Sends your work to a friend. Mentions your name in a meeting. Invites you into a room you did not even know existed.

That usually happens because, over time, people learn what they can expect from you.

Are you reliable? Useful? Generous? Good at what you do? Do you follow through?

I have written before that kindness and usefulness compound. People remember who helped, who showed up, and who made things easier without constantly keeping score.

This is not about building some polished personal brand. It is about becoming someone other people genuinely trust enough to recommend.

So start simple:

• Do what you say you are going to do.

• Help when you can without immediately expecting something back.

• Make introductions.

• Give credit.

• Be the person people are happy to put their name behind.

Eventually, your reputation starts creating collision points for you.

You Don’t Know Which Collision Will Matter

You have no idea which conversation, experiment, skill, or relationship will actually matter five years from now.

But occasionally, one small decision creates another. You meet someone who introduces you to someone else. You try something that builds a skill. That skill opens an opportunity you could not have predicted when you started.

Looking backward, the path makes sense. Looking forward, it rarely does.

So the goal is not to engineer every outcome or turn your life into one giant networking exercise. It is simply to give yourself more chances for something unexpected to happen.

Meet people. Try things. Build range. Become someone others trust.

Then let the collisions do what they do.

The promotion. The vacation. The wedding. The marathon. Paying off the student loans. The new job. The trip you’ve been planning for months. These are the moments we look forward to, remember years later, and often use to measure whether life is moving in the right direction.

On the other end are the moments we’d rather forget. The setbacks, disappointments, losses, and unexpected turns that force us to stop, adapt, and sometimes begin again.

But recently, I’ve been wondering if both perspectives overlook something much more important.

Because when I think about my own life, neither the highest highs nor the lowest lows make up most of my time.

Most of it has been lived somewhere in between.

The ordinary mornings. The commute to work. Going to the gym. Talking with my fiancée. Writing another article. Riding my bike through the woods. Spending time with family. The countless moments that rarely feel remarkable on their own yet quietly make up the majority of our lives.

That realization led me to a simple mental model that completely changed what I think deserves the most attention in our lives.

It’s not meant to be statistically accurate. It’s meant to be conceptually useful—a different lens through which to think about how we spend our days, and perhaps more importantly, where we invest our time, energy, and attention.

Here’s what I mean.

Take a second and just look at it.

Imagine each of those circles represents one day of a single year.

The exact percentages aren’t really the point. This isn’t meant to be a scientific model or an attempt to perfectly categorize every day you’ll ever live. It’s simply a way of visualizing something I think we often forget.

What interested me wasn’t the exact number of green, red, or yellow circles.

It was their distribution.

If this mental model is even directionally correct, then the overwhelming majority of our lives are spent in the yellow circles.

That realization led me to a simple question:

For my businesspeople reading... you're probably already thinking, "This feels a lot like the 80/20 principle."

The Green

Let’s start with the green circles.

These are the moments we naturally organize our lives around. The milestones. The achievements. The days we count down toward for weeks, months, or sometimes even years. They’re exciting, memorable, and absolutely worth celebrating.

The problem isn’t that we value these moments. The problem is that we often assign more importance to them than they are actually able to provide.

I’ve fallen into this trap more than once:

For years, I built my life around the next milestone. Graduate near the top of my class. Earn the scholarship. Land the internship. Find a great job. Pay off another chunk of student loans. Hit the next financial milestone. Publish the next article. Each one felt incredibly important while I was working toward it.

Then I’d arrive.

There would be a moment of excitement, maybe even a sense of relief. But before long, life returned to normal. My attention quietly shifted to the next goal, the next finish line, the next green circle.

As it turns out, this isn’t unique to me.

Psychologists refer to this as hedonic adaptation—our tendency to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness after positive life events. The promotion becomes your new job. The dream vacation eventually becomes another memory. The house becomes your house. Even the biggest achievements slowly become part of your normal life.

This is simply part of being human, I suppose.

The green circles matter. They give us something to strive toward, celebrate, and remember. But they were never designed to sustain us.

The Red

The opposite is also true.

Just as we tend to overvalue the green circles, I think we often overestimate the importance of the red ones.

These are the days we fear.

The breakup. Losing your job. Failing an exam. A health scare. Financial hardship. The plans that fall apart despite your best efforts.

Given the choice, we’d gladly erase every one of them.

And yet, when I look back on my own life, many of the moments that have shaped me the most began as red circles.

• The setback that forced me to rethink my priorities.

• The rejection that pushed me in a different direction.

• The difficult season that made me appreciate what I had taken for granted.

Psychologists have actually studied this phenomenon. They call it post-traumatic growth—the idea that while adversity is undeniably painful, many people eventually report positive psychological changes as a result of working through it. Greater resilience. Stronger relationships. A deeper appreciation for life. A clearer sense of what really matters.

comes to my mind instantly.

Nugent Notes

Alive Day

Welcome to Nugent Notes…

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2 months ago · 11 likes · 2 comments · Patrick D. Nugent

None of this is meant to suggest that suffering is good or that we should seek it out. Only that some of life’s most difficult moments eventually become some of its most meaningful teachers.

The red circles shape us.

Thankfully, they don’t happen very often either.

The Yellow

Over the last couple of years, I’ve realized that many of the mental models I’ve written about are really attempts to answer the same question from different angles.

In The Life Point Allocation Model, I argued that our time, energy, and attention are finite resources. Looking back, those Life Points aren’t really being spent on the green circles. They’re being spent on the yellow ones.

In Keep It Simple, Stupid, I wrote about building systems around what actually matters. The more I think about it, those systems aren’t there to optimize extraordinary days. They’re there to make ordinary ones better.

In If You Don’t Design Your Life, Someone Else Will, I argued that intentional living doesn’t happen by accident. This feels like a continuation of that idea. Because if most of life is lived in the yellow circles, then those are the days we should be designing.

Even 10 Things That Make Me 1% Happier takes on a different meaning through this lens. None of those things were extraordinary. Morning workouts. Riding my bike to work. Writing. Being outside. Time with family. A good cup of coffee. Individually, they’re just ordinary moments. Collectively, they’re the foundation of a life I genuinely enjoy living.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been trying to say all along without fully realizing it.

The Importance of Self-Exploration

Having this in mind has changed the kinds of questions I ask myself.

Instead of asking, “How can I have more green circles?” I find myself asking, “How can I make tomorrow’s yellow circle a little better?”

• How can I make my mornings more peaceful?

• How can I enjoy my work instead of simply enduring it?

• How can I create more meaningful conversations with the people I love?

• How can I spend my attention instead of accidentally giving it away?

• How can I build systems that make any ordinary day feel just a little more fulfilling than it did a year ago?

Those questions don’t produce dramatic overnight transformations; however, I feel like they produce something better.

A life that doesn’t constantly need rescuing by the next vacation, promotion, or milestone.

A life where fulfillment isn’t concentrated into a handful of extraordinary days each year but spread across hundreds of ordinary ones.

Of course, I still want the green circles (who doesn’t?). And I will gladly continue celebrating them when they come.

And on the other end, I know there will be more red circles too.

But neither of them represents the majority of my life.

The yellow circles do.

And if they’re going to occupy most of the space on the page, I think they deserve to occupy most of my attention as well.

More to come on this topic…

I had just finished my collegiate rowing career, and for the first time in five years, all of the structure around training was about to disappear. There was no schedule, coach, or anyone expecting me to show up.

So, I made a simple agreement with myself:

I would work out every day I reasonably could, barring illness or injury, and see how long I could keep it going.

As I’m writing this, it’s been 1,526 consecutive days.

That decision has followed me through work, vacations, business trips, early mornings, late nights, and plenty of days when exercising was the last thing I felt like doing.

For most of those four years, though, I wasn’t thinking much about the streak. I was simply living it one day at a time.

Then I realized I could export every workout I had logged on Strava. My data scientist brain immediately wanted to know what four years of consistency actually looked like.

I exported more than 3,000 rows of workout data, cleaned it in JupyterLab using Python, and started digging.

I wanted to see what 1,526 consecutive days of exercise looked like in the data and identify the biggest lessons I had learned while living them.

The numbers were interesting, but the patterns behind them mattered more. Nearly every chart pointed back to the same ideas about discipline, consistency, identity, and showing up.

So that is what this article is about: the data behind the streak and the five lessons it helped me see.

Let’s get into it.

The Streak at a Glance

Before we get into the lessons, let’s start with the numbers.

What does 1,526 consecutive days of exercise actually look like?

Here are a few of the statistics that stood out after analyzing more than 3,000 rows of workout data.

Also, here is a link to my Strava if you’re interested: Ryan Boyd | Strava Runner Profile

Analysis period: 2022-05-23 through 2026-07-26
Total Workouts Logged: 2,293
Total Hours: 1,912.8 hours (79.7 days of activity)
Average Exercise Time Per Day: 75.2 minutes
Total Calories Burned: 1,192,053 calories (enough energy to power a 100-watt light bulb for approximately 577.3 days!)
Total Heartbeats Logged During Exercise: 14,880,218 estimated heartbeats. Each heartbeat pumps approximately 70 milliliters of blood. Across those recorded workouts, that equals approximately 1,041,615 liters of blood—approximately 1/2 of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

Looking at the totals, it’s easy to focus on the size of the numbers: nearly 2,300 workouts, almost 2,000 hours of exercise, and more than a million calories burned.

But after spending several hours analyzing the data, I realized those weren’t the most interesting part of the story.

The point I am trying to make here isn’t what the streak accumulated to. It is about how it happened, and the five lessons I learned inside four years of ordinary daily decisions.

Lesson #1: Never Let The System Disappear

Looking back, I don’t think my biggest advantage was discipline. It was that for five years I had been surrounded by an environment that made discipline almost inevitable. The coaches, the teammates, the schedule, the race calendar. They weren’t just part of the experience. They were the system.

I didn’t try to replace collegiate rowing. I simply replaced what rowing had been providing. The streak became a new source of accountability. Instead of a coach expecting me at practice, I had a promise to myself not to miss today. Instead of racing other crews, I was trying not to break yesterday’s momentum.

I’ve written about this before, but you don’t need a perfect plan. You only need something that you can repeat. Looking back, that’s exactly what this streak became.

Try this: Think about one habit you want to maintain through the next major change in your life. Instead of creating the perfect plan, create the smallest version of the system that could survive a busy week, a trip, a bad mood, or a disrupted schedule. Make it simple enough to repeat, and durable enough that it does not disappear when life changes.

Lesson #2: Consistency Doesn’t Have To Be Perfect

Here’s something I wish I had realized sooner: consistency doesn’t require perfection. It requires persistence.

Consistency isn’t about giving your maximum effort every single day. It’s about refusing to let one imperfect day become two, then three, then eventually a month. The goal here isn’t to perform at your best every single day; rather, it is to keep showing up in whatever capacity your life allows at that time.

When I tell people about my workout streak, they often imagine that every workout was intense. It wasn’t. Some days were long runs. Others were strength training, hikes, bikes, swims, etc. On top of that, these were in between business trips, holidays, late flights, and days when I was exhausted after work. My workouts adapted to my circumstances, but the habit itself never did.

I’ve written before that “even if the 62nd hit is weak…even if you feel off or tired or distracted…it still counts.” That’s what this streak taught me too. A slower run, a shorter lift, or a low-energy workout is not a failure. It is just another day that I kept the promise alive.

Try this: The next time life gets busy, don’t ask whether you can stick to your perfect routine. Ask yourself, “what’s the smallest version of this habit that still counts?” Protect the habit first. You can always increase the intensity.

Lesson #3: Identity Is Earned, Not Declared

I get it, one workout won’t change your identity. Neither will writing one article, running one mile, reading one book, or making one good decision.

Identity is built through repetition. Every action becomes another piece of evidence for the person you’re becoming, whether you realize it or not.

I argued that “the person you are today is mostly a record of what you practiced,” and that “if repetition built who you are, repetition can build who you become.”

This streak is not an exercise in building endurance or strength. It is about building evidence. Every workout becomes another vote for the identity I want to have. Somewhere along the way, I stopped thinking of myself as someone who was trying to stay in shape and simply became someone who exercised daily.

Try this: Instead of asking yourself, “What do I want to accomplish?” ask, “Who do I want to become?” Then choose one action today that someone with that identity would naturally do. Repeat it often enough, and eventually you won’t have to convince yourself anymore. You will have simply built up the evidence.

Lesson #4: Extraordinary Results Come From Ordinary Days

When we imagine success, we tend to picture defining moments. The race. The promotion. The book launch. The breakthrough workout.

But after looking through more than four years of workout data, I’ve become convinced that extraordinary results rarely come from extraordinary days.

They come from ordinary ones.

Most of the workouts in this dataset weren’t memorable. They weren’t personal records. They weren’t races. They weren’t days where I felt particularly motivated or accomplished. In fact, I couldn’t tell you what happened during workout #612 or workout #1,487.

I think this is true of almost anything worth pursuing to some extent. Writing a book isn’t about the day you publish it. It’s about the hundreds of mornings spent writing when nobody cared.

Building a career isn’t about one promotion. It’s about the years of quietly becoming someone who deserves more.

Extraordinary results are usually just ordinary days, repeated longer than most people are willing to repeat them.

Try this: Stop waiting for a day that feels important. Instead, ask yourself, “What’s one ordinary thing that I can do that Future Me will benefit from?” Then… do it.

Lesson #5: Play The Long Game

One of the greatest advantages you can give yourself in life is the willingness to think in years instead of days.

When I started this streak, I wasn’t chasing 1,526 days. I wasn’t thinking about burning a million calories or logging nearly 2,000 hours of exercise. Honestly, I wasn’t thinking much beyond tomorrow.

The funny thing about long-term commitments is that they don’t feel long-term while you’re living them.

In one of my favorite pieces to date, I wrote, “we overestimate what we can do in a day, and we underestimate what we can do in a year.” This streak is just another reminder of that idea. Every workout felt insignificant on its own. Together, they changed the trajectory of my life.

Try this: Ask yourself, “What decision could I make today that would make my life meaningfully better four years from now?” Then forget about the finish line and focus on tomorrow. If you keep doing that, one day you’ll look back and realize you’ve built something you never thought was possible.

In Closing

When I made that commitment on May 23, 2022, I wasn’t trying to build a 1,526-day streak. I was simply trying to show up the next day.

Fast forward four years, that still feels like the point.

Build a system. Give it some flexibility. Keep the promise to yourself long enough for it to become part of your identity. Then trust that the ordinary days will eventually add up to something extraordinary.

On that note, see you next week.

There is no grand framework here, and these are not 11 habits I have perfectly mastered. They are simply ideas I have picked up through relationships, athletic career, writing, work, mentors, mistakes, and paying attention to what seems to make life better.

Some are actions you can take immediately. Others are perspectives that may take years to fully understand.

You do not need to reinvent your entire life overnight. Sometimes, improving it simply means taking better care of what is already in front of you.

Here are 11 places to begin.

1. Invest in Your Relationships

The people around you will influence the quality of your life more than almost anything else. Relationships do not maintain themselves, especially in adulthood, so spending time with people you love has to become something you actively protect.

Try this today: Call someone you care about and make an actual plan to see them.

Related: The Currency of Your Life

2. Always Be Stepping

Keep your body moving in whatever way feels sustainable: walking, lifting, running, climbing, stretching, or simply spending less time sitting still. Movement improves far more than your physical health; it can shift your mood, sharpen your thinking, and create momentum when you feel stuck.

Shoutout to

Try this today: Take a 20-minute walk without your phone.

Related: 10 Things That Make Me 1% Happier

3. Find “Your Thing”

Find an activity that gives you an outsized return in meaning, energy, or fulfillment without requiring much money. It might be writing, photography, drawing, trail running, cooking, or anything else that feels valuable even when nobody is watching.

Try this today: Spend 20 minutes doing something you enjoy creating or practicing, not just consuming.

Related: 414,000 Words Nobody Asked Me to Write

4. Find a Few Good Mentors

You do not need one person to guide every part of your life. Find different people who can sharpen your thinking around work, money, health, relationships, creativity, and character, whether you know them personally or learn from them through books.

Try this today: Identify one area where you need guidance and reach out to someone you respect—or choose one book that can mentor you from a distance.

Related: 5 Reasons Why You Should Read More Books

5. Define What “Enough” Means to You

Ambition can improve your life, but without a boundary, every achievement becomes another temporary checkpoint. You can keep growing while still deciding what enough looks like in terms of money, work, time, relationships, and the life you want to enjoy along the way.

Try this today: Write down what “enough” would look like in one area where you constantly feel pressure to want more.

Related: The Scoreboard Is Lying to You

6. Practice Supreme Acceptance

People will act irrationally, plans will fall apart, and life will occasionally refuse to cooperate with what you had in mind. Acceptance does not mean approving of everything; it means seeing reality clearly without allowing your frustration with it to create even more suffering.

Try this today: When something irritates you, pause and ask what is actually within your control before reacting.

Related: People Are Dumb, But It’s Complicated.

7. Plant Seeds Before You Need Them

Build relationships with different kinds of people before you need a favor, introduction, or opportunity. Some connections will grow into friendships, collaborations, or career-changing opportunities, while others will fade, but you rarely know which seed will become an oak.

Try this today: Reach out to one person you admire, follow up with someone you recently met, or introduce two people who should know each other.

Related: Increase Your Surface Area for Luck

8. Learn to Delay Gratification

Most worthwhile things take longer than you want and improve more slowly than you can see. Rowing taught me that years of training may only produce incremental gains, but eventually the process becomes the point and the patience carries into everything else.

Try this today: Choose one long-term goal and commit to the smallest action you can repeat without needing immediate results.

Related: The Contracts You Make With Yourself

9. Stop Demanding That You Have It All Figured Out

You should work hard, make plans, and take responsibility for your direction, but life will still change in ways you cannot predict. You do not need the entire map; you usually just need enough clarity to take the next meaningful step.

Try this today: Replace “What am I doing with my life?” with “What is the next experiment worth trying?”

Related: Your 20s Are for Testing, Not Perfecting

10. Be the Initiator

Do not always wait for someone else to make the plan, start the conversation, or bring the group together. Host the dinner, organize the outing, make the introduction, and become someone who helps other people feel included and energized.

Try this today: Invite a few people to do something simple and put an actual date on the calendar.

Related: 6 Hard Truths About Growing Up

11. Don’t Become the Victim of Your Own Story

The same setback can become proof that life is against you or a lesson that helps you move forward. You may not control what happened, but you have far more control over the meaning you give it and what you choose to do next.

Try this today: Take one current frustration and ask, “What is this teaching me, and what is still within my control?”

Related: You Are What You Say You Are

You do not need to tackle all 11 of these at once. In fact, trying to overhaul every part of your life overnight would probably make things worse.

Pick the one that feels most neglected right now.

Call the person. Take the walk. Reach out to the mentor. Make the plan. Start the practice. Let go of the thing you cannot control.

A better life is rarely built through one dramatic reinvention. More often, it comes from small decisions repeated long enough to change the way you live, think, and relate to the people around you.

Take better care of what is already in front of you.

See you next week.

I call it The Second Question Rule:

Ask the obvious first question. Then ask one sincere follow-up about the part of their answer that seemed most alive.

It helps you get past small talk, build trust faster, remember what matters to people, and spot ways to help or connect them.

The idea started with a Note:

“What do you do?” tells you where someone fits.

The second question tells you who they are.

Become Genuinely Interested

Dale Carnegie’s advice in How to Win Friends and Influence People was simple: become genuinely interested in other people.

The Second Question Rule turns that principle into something you can use immediately.

The first question usually collects facts:

What do you do?
Where are you from?
How long have you been doing that?

The second question uncovers the person behind them:

What part of your work keeps you interested?
What do you miss most about where you grew up?
What has that experience taught you?

That shift matters because people can tell when you are waiting for your turn to speak. They can also tell when you are actually paying attention.

A good second question communicates three things at once:

1. You heard them.

2. You found their answer worth exploring.

3. You are interested in more than the surface-level facts.

During my Substack Live with , he talked about practicing karate. I could have asked how long he trained or what belt he earned.

Instead, I asked:

What three concrete life skills did you learn within karate that transfer across any discipline?

Timestamp: 24:28-26:00

His answer moved beyond the activity itself and into presence, mental clarity, confidence, and responsibility.

That is what a good second question can do.

“How long did you do it?” gets another fact.

“What did it teach you?” gets meaning.

This does not require memorizing clever conversation starters. Listen for the detail someone emphasizes, the subject that changes their energy, or the thought hidden after the word “but.”

“I work in accounting, but lately I’ve been restoring old furniture.”

There is your opening.

Stay there for one more question.

The Real Value Comes After the Question

The Second Question Rule starts with listening.

In Speak Less, Think More, But Not Forever I wrote about learning to “listen to listen, not to respond.” When you are genuinely curious, people can feel it. You notice what they care about, the conversation opens up, and the other person feels heard. That is what begins building trust.

But listening becomes even more useful when you have a wide range of ideas to connect it to.

In 5 Reasons Why You Should Read More Books, I wrote about how reading expands your perspective. Books give you language, ideas, references, and access to experiences far outside your own.

They also give you more ways into a conversation.

Someone mentions a book, and you recognize the idea.

They describe a problem, and you remember something that could help.

They share an interest, and you have a recommendation that fits.

The Power of Crossing Disciplines explored a similar idea: seemingly unrelated interests can sharpen one another.

The more disciplines you explore, the more connections you can see.

Something ordinary in one field can become valuable when applied somewhere else. Your different interests give you more perspectives to carry into a conversation and more ways to relate to the person in front of you.

The wider your curiosity, the more entry points you have into someone else’s world.

In The Most Valuable Asset You’re Probably Ignoring, I described these accumulated skills, experiences, stories, and traits as identity capital. Curiosity adds to that internal asset base. It gives you more to notice, more ways to relate, and more value to offer when you enter a room.

Then comes the part most people miss: carrying the answer forward.

During one of my Substack Lives with , I described keeping a “mental Rolodex” of the people around me—what they are building, where they need help, and who they might benefit from knowing. The point is not to treat every relationship like a transaction. It is to pay attention closely enough that you can listen, help, or connect people when the opportunity appears.

Timestamp: 24:20-26:00

That connects directly to what I wrote in Increase Your Surface Area for Luck:

Help → Reputation → Introductions → Opportunities → Repeat.

It can begin with something small. Send the article. Recommend the book. Ask how the interview went. Make the introduction. Remember the thing they thought everyone else had forgotten.

The second question gives you the information.

Listening gives you understanding.

Remembering and acting on it turns a good conversation into a relationship.

Relationships Compound Into Community

A strong relationship rarely ends with one good conversation.

It can lead to a collaboration, an introduction, a shared project, or a room where more people begin connecting with one another.

During a Substack Live with , I talked about the role relationships have played in creating a stronger sense of purpose in my life.

Coaching gave me a place to mentor and teach.

Writing gave me an outlet to articulate ideas and help other people.

Substack gave me an environment where those conversations and relationships could continue growing.

Timestamp: 3:30-10:00

The relationships that I have built on Substack have followed this pattern.

Many began with something small: reading someone’s work, leaving a thoughtful comment, exchanging messages, or continuing a conversation that could have easily ended after the first interaction.

Over time, curiosity became familiarity. Familiarity became trust. Trust became collaboration.

That progression matters because community is rarely built through one grand gesture.

• It is built through repeated attention.

• A useful question.

• A remembered detail.

• A thoughtful follow-up.

• An introduction made at the right time.

The Second Question Rule may begin as a conversational habit, but practiced consistently, it can change the kinds of relationships you build and the opportunities you create around them.

The first question starts the conversation.

What you do next determines whether it goes anywhere.

A few people who deserve a mention:

Try It in Your Next Three Conversations

You do not need a list of clever questions. You need to pay closer attention to the answer already in front of you.

For your next three conversations:

1. Ask the normal first question.

2. Listen for the detail with the most energy behind it.

3. Ask one sincere follow-up about that detail.

4. Remember one thing that matters to them.

5. Follow up later if you can help, share something useful, or make a connection.

That is it.

Maybe the conversation ends there. Maybe it leads to a friendship, collaboration, opportunity, or introduction neither of you could have predicted.

You cannot control where it goes.

You can control whether you stay curious long enough to give it somewhere to go.

The first question helps you place someone.

The second helps you meet them.

Pick the right career. Find your purpose. Build the perfect routine. Get in shape. Save money. Travel. Date well. Make friends. Figure out who you are. Somehow, you are supposed to launch one polished version of your life before you have even been an adult long enough to understand what that life should feel like.

But maybe your 20s are not a launchpad.

Maybe they are a laboratory.

TRY

Clarity rarely comes before experience. It usually comes because of it.

That is why I think the first job of your 20s is to try. Try the internship. Join the team. Move somewhere new. Travel when you can. Take the class. Start writing. Say yes to the opportunity that feels slightly outside your current identity.

When I look back, walking onto the rowing team, studying business and information systems, working different roles, living in Germany, coaching, traveling, and eventually writing online were all experiments.

I did not always know where they were leading.

But each one gave me more data.

And in your 20s, data matters.

EVALUATE

Trying things is only useful if you pay attention to what they teach you.

What energized you? What drained you? What kind of people did you enjoy being around? What kind of work made you feel useful? What skills transferred from one environment to another?

That is where pattern recognition begins.

Rowing, analytics, coaching, writing, and traveling might look unrelated on the surface, but they all taught me something about discipline, communication, adaptability, and connecting dots.

Experience by itself does not automatically create wisdom.

You have to extract the lesson.

Your 20s give you a lot of inputs. The work is learning how to read them.

SHIFT

The point of experimenting is not to keep everything forever.

Sometimes the most valuable thing an experience gives you is the realization that something does not fit.

A job drains you. An environment flattens you. A certain version of success starts to feel borrowed. A path looks impressive from the outside but feels wrong on the inside.

That is still very useful information.

Your 20s are not only about discovering what you love. They are also about discovering what you do not want, what you do not value, and who you do not want to become.

Not every experiment needs to become your purpose.

Some experiments only exist to show you what needs to change.

TRUST

At 26, I sometimes feel like I should have more figured out.

But if adulthood really started after college, then I am basically a four-year-old adult with a job, a calendar, and a retirement account, wondering why I have not mastered everything yet.

That deserves some grace. But not passivity.

Your 20s still matter. This is when you build values, skills, financial literacy, relationships, health, curiosity, self-awareness, and some tolerance for risk.

You do not need to have the whole map yet.

But you do need to participate in the experiment.

You are not behind just because you are still testing. But you are responsible for paying attention to what the tests reveal.

In Closing

Maybe that is the better way to think about your 20s.

Not as a launchpad where every decision needs to send you perfectly into the rest of your life, but as a laboratory where you are allowed to test your way forward.

You need to T.E.S.T!

You are not supposed to have every answer right now. But you are supposed to be paying attention.

Because the goal is not to drift forever. The goal is to gather enough evidence that the life you build next is based on reality instead of assumption.

You are not failing in your 20s. You are testing.

And if you keep testing honestly, the data eventually starts to point somewhere.

Money. Investments. Assets. Net worth.

But there is another kind of capital that may matter even more, especially when you are still trying to figure shit out:

identity capital.

The phrase sounds more academic than it needs to. To me, it is simply the collection of things you build inside yourself over time. Your abilities. Your skills. Your stories. Your experiences. Your traits.

The things that do not always show up on a balance sheet, a resume, or a scoreboard, but quietly shape what opportunities you can recognize, what rooms you can walk into, and what kind of person you are becoming.

And unlike most things people chase in their twenties, this is something no one can take from you.

My journey with writing has been the clearest example of this in my own life.

When I first bought a journal in July of 2023, I was not trying to build a platform, become “a writer,” or create some grand personal development system.

I was just 23, freshly out of college, living in a small studio apartment, and trying to figure out what adulthood was supposed to look like.

So I started writing. I decided that I would commit to roughly ten minutes a day.

For a while, it looked like nothing.

But looking back, those pages were quietly building something in me. They helped me think more clearly, notice patterns, articulate ideas, and eventually gave me enough confidence to start writing publicly on Substack.

More on that journey here:

The funny part is that the notebook was never just producing pages.

It was producing assets.

Miyamoto Musashi understood this long before anyone called it identity capital.

Most people remember him as one of the greatest swordsmen in history, but that is only part of the story. Musashi was also a writer, painter, calligrapher, strategist, and philosopher.

His mastery was not limited to one lane.

The sword sharpened his discipline. Painting sharpened his observation. Writing sharpened his philosophy. Strategy sharpened how he understood conflict, timing, and human nature.

I write about this idea more in depth here:

Each pursuit added something to the person he was becoming.

That is what made him dangerous, not just as a fighter, but as a thinker.

He was not simply collecting skills. He was becoming more complete.

See, the goal is not to collect random skills just for the sake of looking more impressive. The goal is to build a deeper personal asset base you can carry into any room, role, project, and season of life you may find yourself in.

Because identity capital is not one thing.

It is not just your talent. It is not just experience. It is not just confidence. It is a combination of everything you have practiced, survived, learned, and noticed.

Because the idea can feel abstract, I find it helpful to break identity capital down into something more tangible.

That is why I like thinking of it as an A.S.S.E.T.

A — Actions | What you repeatedly do.
Journaling. Going to the gym. Calling your parents. Reading before bed. Publishing an article every week.

S — Skills | The competencies those repetitions develop.
Writing. Public speaking. Photography. Financial planning. Coding. Sales.

S — Stories | The narratives you carry about yourself and the lessons you’ve earned.
The story of moving abroad. The story of paying off debt. The story of starting from zero. The story of overcoming failure. The story that you are resilient. The story that you are capable of more than you thought.

E — Exposure | The people, places, ideas, and environments that expand your perspective.
Traveling to a new country. Reading books outside your worldview. Meeting mentors. Taking a job outside your comfort zone. Attending conferences. Having difficult conversations.

T — Traits | The natural wiring you discover, sharpen, and turn into an advantage.
Curiosity. Discipline. Creativity. Empathy. Pattern recognition. Adaptability. The things that feel natural to you, but become valuable when you notice them, practice them, and learn where they are useful.

That is the real value of identity capital.

You may not always know where the action, skill, story, exposure, or trait will lead. I certainly did not know a ten-minute journaling habit would eventually become hundreds of pages, a public writing practice, and a clearer sense of who I was becoming.

But that is how these things work.

You build the asset before you fully understand its value.

And maybe that is the question worth asking more often:

Not, “Will this pay off immediately?”

But, “What is this building in me?”

Which feels appropriate, considering this entire piece is about the process of writing.

I was in the middle of my usual ten minutes one morning when I noticed I only had about 20 pages left in my third full notebook.

Three journals. Almost three years. One page a day since July of 2023.

Most days, it has not felt like much. Just a page before work. A place to dump thoughts, organize the noise, complain a little, reflect a little, and occasionally write a sentence that makes me think, “Okay, there might be something there.”

But small things have the ability to compound when you repeat them long enough.

At roughly 300 words per page, those journals come out to about 328,500 private words. Add in the 85,500 public words sitting in my Substack article archive, and the total is roughly 414,000 words.

414,000 words nobody asked me to write.

That number does not make me a good writer. It does not mean I have figured anything out. And it definitely does not entitle me to attention, money, success, or some guaranteed outcome.

But I do think the process has done something to me.

Writing has become one of the main ways I process my life. It has helped me see what I worry about, what I keep returning to, what I am trying to build, and what kind of adulthood I am still learning how to live.

So no, this piece is not really about the word count.

To be fully honest, I just thought the number might get you to click.

It is about what happens when you keep returning to a small practice long enough for it to start changing how you think.

I Didn’t Start With a Plan

The journal started before I had any real language for what I was doing.

As I wrote about in my one-year Substack reflection, that first journal came during a strange transition point after college, when life stopped handing me obvious checkpoints.

For years, there had always been a next thing: the next semester, the next season, the next race, the next assignment, the next clear marker of progress.

Then a lot of that structure disappeared.

Life did not fall apart or anything dramatic like that. If anything, things were going well. But the absence of a clear roadmap created a different kind of uncertainty. I was trying to figure out work, money, relationships, ambition, routines, and what progress was supposed to look like when no one was grading it anymore.

That is where the journal came in.

Not as a solution. More like a place to sort through the questions.

Some days, that meant writing about what I was worried about. Other days, it meant thinking through a decision, making sense of a conversation, tracking a pattern, or trying to understand why something bothered me more than I wanted to admit.

There was no real format at first.

Just a blank page and the growing realization that if I did not make space to hear myself think, the noise of the day would usually do the thinking for me.

The Process Was Simple Enough to Survive

The only reason this practice lasted is because I kept it simple.

Ten minutes a day. One page.

That was it.

No complicated template. No perfect morning routine. No pressure to write something profound every time I opened the notebook.

Some days, the page was reflective. Other days, it was mostly a recap of what happened. Sometimes it was a list of things I needed to do, a thought I could not shake, a frustration I needed to get out of my head, or an idea that might eventually become something more.

The standard was never brilliance. The standard was doing.

I have written before about the contracts you make with yourself, and looking back, journaling was one of the first quiet contracts I learned how to keep. Nobody was checking in on it. Nobody cared if I skipped a day. There was no external reward for doing it.

But I knew. And I think that is where a lot of the value came from.

Every page became a small piece of evidence. Not evidence that I was becoming some great writer, but evidence that I could keep showing up for something even when it was ordinary, repetitive, or inconvenient.

That same approach eventually carried into Substack.

One article a week. Not because every idea felt fully formed. Not because I always felt inspired. Not because I knew exactly where it was going.

Just one article a week, stacked on top of the last one.

Over time, the private pages and the public essays started feeding each other. The journal gave me raw material. Substack forced me to organize it. Notes helped me test ideas. Comments and conversations helped me see what resonated.

And slowly, common themes started to show up.

Ambition. Adulthood. Discipline. Presence. Progress. Self-trust. Comparison. The tension between wanting more and trying not to lose appreciation for what is already here.

I did not identify all of that upfront. The process revealed it.

Three Things the Practice Taught Me

After enough pages, writing stopped feeling like a random habit and started becoming a feedback loop.

It helped me see which worries kept repeating, which ideas kept resurfacing, and which parts of my life needed a better outlet.

Three benefits have stood out most.

1. Most of what I worry about ends up passing

I talked about this recently on a Substack Live with , but one of the most useful parts of journaling is being able to revisit an old version of your own mind.

Every now and then, I will flip back to an entry from a year or two ago and read what I was stressed about that day.

Sometimes I barely remember the problem.

Other times, I remember it clearly but realize it ended up being fine, never happened, or mattered for about three days before life moved on.

That does not mean every worry is fake. Some problems are real and deserve attention.

But journaling has shown me how often my mind treats temporary discomfort like permanent truth.

Writing it down gives me a record. Looking back gives me perspective.

And after seeing enough old worries lose their power, I have started to trust that not every anxious thought deserves to be treated like prophecy.

2. Writing creates an asset base

Another benefit is the one I am using right now.

By taking the time to write consistently, I have slowly built up a database of thoughts, ideas, phrases, stories, and themes that I can return to.

A journal entry might become a Note. A Note might become an article. An article might become something I reference six months later when the same idea shows up in a new way.

That is part of what has surprised me most.

The writing does not disappear after I publish it or close the notebook. It becomes raw material. It gives me something to build from.

Over time, certain themes keep resurfacing: ambition, adulthood, discipline, presence, process, self-trust, and comparison. I did not sit down on day one and decide those would be my topics. They revealed themselves through repetition.

That is the value of building an archive. You start to see what your mind keeps circling.

3. Writing became a creative outlet that crossed into everything else

The third benefit is less measurable, but just as real.

Writing gave me a creative outlet outside of my day job, coaching, and the other responsibilities in my life.

I enjoy my job. I like the analytical side of what I do. I also coach high school rowing, which gives me a way to mentor, teach, and stay connected to something I care about.

But what has surprised me is how much those worlds feed each other.

Writing makes me better at explaining ideas. Coaching makes me better at communicating with people. My job makes me better at structuring information. Reading gives me new examples. Journaling helps me notice what I actually think.

None of those things are as separate as they seem.

I have written before about the power of crossing disciplines, and this process has made that idea feel more practical. The goal is not to become scattered. It is to build a life where different interests sharpen each other instead of competing for space.

For me, writing has become the place where a lot of those threads come together.

It gives me a way to process ideas, distill what I am learning, and hopefully turn some of it into something useful for someone else.

Maybe writing is not that outlet for you. Maybe it is music, photography, coaching, cooking, building, volunteering, or something else entirely.

But I do think most people need something that is not just work and not just consumption. Something that lets you take what is inside your head and turn it into something outside of you.

If You Want to Start, Keep It Small

If there is one practical thing I would take from all of this, it is that the practice has to be small enough to survive your actual life.

Not your perfect life. Your real one.

The busy weeks. The tired mornings. The days where you have nothing interesting to say. That is why ten minutes worked for me.

One page was small enough that I could usually do it, but meaningful enough that it still created a record.

A lot of good habits die because we make them too impressive in our heads. We design the perfect system, then abandon it the second life gets inconvenient.

But most of the practices that change you are boring at first.

A page. A walk. A workout. A conversation. A few paragraphs before work.

Something repeated long enough that it starts to become part of who you are.

So start with something you can return to.

Let it be simple. Let it be unimpressive. Let the process reveal what it is supposed to become.

The Point Was Never the Number

414,000 words sounds like a lot.

And in one sense, it is.

But the number is not really the point.

The point is what happens when you keep giving yourself a place to think. A place to process. A place to return to your own life with a little more honesty.

Most of those words were not impressive. A lot of them were repetitive. Some were probably dramatic for no reason. Plenty will never be read by anyone else.

But they still counted.

It was evidence that I could keep a small promise to myself. Evidence that my worries were often more temporary than they felt. Evidence that ideas compound when you give them somewhere to live.

I do not know exactly what writing will become for me.

Maybe it becomes something bigger. Maybe it stays a meaningful practice on the side. Maybe it keeps changing in ways I cannot predict yet.

But I know it has already changed how I move through my life.

And that is enough for now.

Three years of journals. Sixteen months of Substack. Hundreds of thousands of words nobody asked me to write.

This is not a finished product.

See you next week ;)

But he could not explain people.

At least not well enough to save himself from them.

In 1720, Newton got caught up in the South Sea Bubble, a speculative market frenzy that pulled in some of the smartest and wealthiest people of the time. He made money early, got pulled back in, and ultimately lost heavily.

The quote attached to him has survived for a reason:

The exact quote may have grown over time, but the lesson is still painfully intact.

Being smart does not make you immune to being human.

You can be brilliant and still get swept up in the crowd. You can be thoughtful and still ignore the red flag. You can be self-aware and still rationalize the thing you want to be true. You can be educated and still mistake confidence for truth. You can be logical and still make an emotional decision, then use logic afterward to defend it.

This is the problem with human nature.

It does not disappear because you have read enough books, listened to enough podcasts, gone to therapy, journaled for six months, or convinced yourself you are “the rational one.”

Human nature is not something happening only in other people. It is happening inside us too.

Which means the hard part is not spotting irrationality in everyone else. That part is easy. The hard part is noticing when our own intelligence, certainty, explanations, and incentives are quietly steering the wheel.

Here are four rules that can help.

1. Never confuse intelligence with wisdom.

Isaac Newton is the reminder here. He could calculate the motion of planets, yet he still got caught up in the South Sea Bubble, making money early before getting pulled back into the frenzy and losing heavily.

The lesson is simple: intelligence helps you think, but wisdom helps you notice when your thinking is being hijacked by ego, fear, greed, or the desire to be right.

Being smart does not make you immune to rationalizing the thing you already want to believe. So before defending a decision, pause and ask yourself: Am I trying to find the truth, or am I just protecting the story I already like? Historical research supports the broad story that Newton made gains, got drawn back into the mania, and suffered major losses.

2. Treat certainty as a warning sign.

Socrates is the reminder here. The line most often attached to him is,

“I know that I know nothing,”

but the deeper idea from Plato’s Apology is more practical than that: Socrates believed he was wiser than others because he did not pretend to know what he did not know.

The lesson is simple: certainty can feel like clarity, but sometimes it is just emotion wearing a better outfit. Anger can feel like truth. Anxiety can feel like intuition. Pride can feel like principle. Attraction can feel like certainty.

But a strong feeling does not always mean you have an accurate read on reality. So before trusting your first interpretation, pause and ask yourself: What else could be true here? Socrates’ wisdom was not in having every answer. It was in knowing when to question the answer that arrived too quickly.

3. Believe behavior more than explanations.

Maya Angelou is the reminder here. Her famous advice was,

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

The lesson is simple: people can explain almost anything, but repeated behavior usually tells the clearer story. Someone can apologize, justify, promise, reframe, or say all the right words, but if their actions keep showing you the same pattern, the pattern deserves more weight than the explanation. This does not mean one mistake defines a person, but it does mean you should stop letting good explanations talk you out of what repeated behavior keeps revealing.

So when someone’s words and actions do not match, pause and ask yourself: Is this a one-time mistake, or is this a pattern I keep explaining away? Oprah has shared this as one of the major lessons she learned from Angelou, especially around learning to assess people’s actions instead of giving endless benefit of the doubt.

4. Watch what incentives do to people.

Charlie Munger is the reminder here. He is often associated with the line,

“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.”

The lesson is simple: if you want to understand why people behave the way they do, do not only look at what they say they value. Look at what they are rewarded for doing. People are shaped by what gets praised, promoted, tolerated, ignored, and punished. If social media rewards outrage, people become more outrageous. If a workplace rewards looking busy, people perform busyness. If a friend group rewards gossip, people bring gossip. This does not mean people have no character, but it does mean character gets tested by the systems people live inside.

So before judging behavior in isolation, pause and ask yourself: What does this environment reward people for becoming? Munger’s incentive quote is widely cited because it captures one of the simplest ways to understand human behavior: outcomes often follow rewards.

In Conclusion

The danger here is that we are irrational and still believe we are being perfectly reasonable.

That is how smart people justify bad decisions. It is how certainty turns into blindness. It is how explanations become more convincing than behavior. It is how incentives quietly shape people while everyone keeps talking about values.

I am not trying to make the argument that you should distrust everyone, including yourself. That would be exhausting.

Rather, I am trying to encourage you to slow down your conclusions.

Before you assume intelligence means wisdom, look for humility. Before you trust certainty, make room for another explanation. Before you believe the apology, watch the pattern. Before you judge the person, study the incentive.

Human nature is not something you defeat once and move on from. It is something you learn to account for. You build a little space between the feeling and the conclusion. You pay attention to what people repeatedly do. You notice what the room rewards. You stay humble enough to admit that you might be seeing only part of the picture.

Newton could calculate the movement of planets, but not the madness of people.

The least we can do is stop pretending we are above the same madness…

You usually do not learn them all at once. You learn them slowly. Through repetition. Through regret. Through paying attention. Through waking up one day and realizing that life is being shaped, with or without your full participation.

None of these are meant to sound cynical. If anything, I think they are clarifying. Because the harsh truths are often the ones that make life more honest, more grounded, and strangely, more freeing.

Here are six that I keep coming back to.

1. No one is coming to save you.

One of the hardest parts about adulthood is how little structure it gives you.

When you are younger, life comes with built-in rails. School, sports, parents, deadlines, and expectations give your life shape. Then adulthood shows up, and a lot of that disappears.

I do not mean that nobody will help you. Hopefully they will. I mean that no one can take ownership of your life for you. No one can build your standards, choose your direction, or manage your health, finances, career, and relationships on your behalf.

That part is on you.

And if you are not intentional, life will still move. Your habits will still compound. Your choices will still shape your reality. But instead of being shaped by conscious effort, they will be shaped by drift, convenience, avoidance, and other people’s expectations.

That is the part that unsettles me most:

waking up one day and realizing you built a life you never actively chose.

This is not about blaming yourself for everything or pretending you control every outcome. It is about participation. Adulthood asks you to pay attention, get honest, and take ownership of the parts of life that are now yours to carry.

Because nobody can live your life for you.

2. The stories you tell yourself become the life you live.

A lot of people think their life is shaped mostly by circumstance. And of course, circumstance matters. But so does the meaning you attach to it.

That is where this harsh truth comes in: the stories you repeat to yourself do not stay harmless for long. Eventually, they become identity.

“I’m bad with money.”
“I’m not creative.”
“I’m not a leader.”
“I always mess things up.”
“I’m not built for that.”

At first, those sound like passing thoughts. Then they become scripts. And once a script gets repeated enough, you stop hearing it as a story and start treating it like fact.

I’ve seen that in my own life. A lot of the things I once believed I could not do were never actually based in truth. They were based in repetition. Old assumptions. Other people’s voices. Earlier versions of me I never bothered to update.

A lot of people are not living inside reality as much as they are living inside a narrative they have rehearsed for years.

Because the stories you tell yourself shape what you attempt, what you avoid, what you believe you deserve, and what kind of future feels possible.

And if that is true, changing your life does not always start with changing everything. Sometimes it starts by catching the script and refusing to keep living inside a sentence that was never meant to define you.

3. There is no optimal path.

One of the harder parts of adulthood is realizing there is no single correct way to live it.

No perfect timeline. No universal map. No exact sequence of choices that guarantees you end up where you want to be.

And yet, a lot of people live as if there is. One right age to get married. One right career path. One right pace. One right version of success. If your life does not seem to line up with that imagined script, it is easy to feel behind.

But most people’s paths are shaped by far more than discipline or good planning alone. Environment, upbringing, timing, exposure, luck, fear, opportunity, and responsibility all play a role.

Life is much less linear than people make it seem.

That is why comparison can be so misleading. You are measuring your real life against someone else’s visible milestones without seeing the tradeoffs, support, uncertainty, or context behind them.

There is no optimal path. There is only the path in front of you, the choices available to you, and whether you are honest enough to build a life that is actually yours.

4. It’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility.

One of the hardest parts of adulthood is realizing that both of these can be true at the same time.

A lot of what shaped you was not your choice. The way you were raised. The patterns you inherited. The pain, insecurity, coping mechanisms, or beliefs you picked up along the way. You may not have asked for any of it.

But at some point, it still becomes your responsibility.

Not because you should shame yourself for it. Not because healing is easy. But because if something is affecting your peace, your relationships, or your future, eventually it becomes yours to face.

You can carry things that are not your fault and still be responsible for what happens next.

Responsibility is not punishment. It is not self-blame. It is the decision to stop letting an old wound, old pattern, or old story keep running your life unchecked.

Unfair as that may be, it is also where your power begins.

5. Get some f*cking sleep.

A surprising amount of adult problems are made worse by exhaustion.

Not solved by sleep, obviously. But made worse by not getting enough of it. Your mood gets shakier. Your patience gets thinner. Your decisions get worse. Your workouts suffer. Your cravings go up. Your focus drops. Everything feels heavier than it actually is.

And yet, a lot of people wear exhaustion like a badge of honor. They stay up too late, scroll too long, run on fumes, and then act confused when life feels harder than it should.

While we’re at it, go buy this book:

Sleep is not laziness. It is maintenance. It is one of the most basic ways you take care of your mind, body, and ability to function well.

You do not get extra points for being constantly tired. You just make your life harder to manage.

A lot of people are not dealing with a motivation problem, a discipline problem, or even a life problem as much as they are dealing with a chronic exhaustion problem.

Get some sleep. Your life will look different when your nervous system is not running on empty.

6. Kindness and usefulness compound.

A lot of people move through adulthood thinking they need to be more impressive. More polished. More ahead. More important.

But over time, I have started to think it matters more to be useful.

To be the kind of person who helps. Who follows up. Who makes the introduction. Who does good work. Who treats people well when there is nothing obvious to gain from it.

That kind of energy has a way of compounding. Not always immediately. Not always in ways you can measure. But people remember who showed up. Who was generous. Who was reliable. Who gave more than expected without keeping score.

This is not about being naive or becoming a people-pleaser. It is about understanding that reciprocity is real. The way you treat people, the value you add, and the reputation you build tend to come back around over time.

I had a great conversation with about this topic last week. You should check out his take on this:

The Creator's Edge

How I Got Referrals, Testimonials, and Help From Other Creators (Without Asking)

Every now and then, you read a book, and you never see the world the same again…

Read more

3 months ago · 92 likes · 80 comments · Rob Riker

A lot of the best things in adult life do not come from chasing status directly. They come from becoming someone other people are glad to know, trust, and recommend.

In Closing

None of these truths are especially glamorous.

They do not make for a perfect life. They do not remove uncertainty. They do not guarantee success. But I do think they make adulthood a little clearer.

More than anything, these truths have helped me stop waiting for life to become simpler before I take it seriously. They have pushed me to be more honest about what I can control, more careful about the stories I repeat, more patient with my own path, and more intentional about the kind of person I want to be.

Maybe that is all growing up really is: learning to face reality without becoming cynical, and building a life anyway.

Present and Progressing

I write about intentional living, self-discipline, and the systems that keep you motivated long after inspiration fades. Present & Progressing helps you simplify the noise, build clarity, and design a life that actually feels aligned.

By Ryan

How do you stay disciplined?

It’s a funny question because from the outside, discipline can look a lot cleaner than it actually feels.

People see the article every week, the early morning workout, the journal entry, the routine, the thing you keep showing up for, and assume there must be some internal switch that has been flipped.

Like you wake up every morning and feel ready.

I don’t.

There are plenty of mornings where I don’t want to work out. Plenty of times where I don’t feel like writing. Plenty of days where journaling feels repetitive, running sounds awful, and the easier option is sitting right there.

So I don’t think discipline is about always feeling motivated.

I think discipline begins with the contracts you make with yourself.

You can listen to the full Substack Live conversation here:

The Liberation Letter

Exploring Mindset, Journey, Progress and Discipline with Ryan

Listen now

6 months ago · 13 likes · Mick and Ryan

The Contracts Nobody Sees

Not the formal kind. Not the kind signed with ink, enforced by lawyers, or stored in some folder you forget exists.

I mean the private promises nobody else sees.

The article you said you would write. The workout you said you would do. The habit you said you were finally going to take seriously. The version of yourself you keep saying you want to become.

Those are contracts too.

The hard part is that nobody is usually there to enforce them. Nobody knows if you quietly skip it. Nobody sends a warning letter. Nobody shows up at your door asking why you didn’t follow through.

But you know.

And over time, I think that matters more than we realize.

Because every time you keep a promise to yourself, you build a little more trust with yourself. And every time you quietly break one, you teach yourself something too.

How Writing Proved This

Writing became the clearest example of this in my own life.

When I first started publishing online, I would not have confidently called myself a writer. I had journals full of thoughts and a general sense that writing was something I wanted to take seriously, but there was still a gap between the person I imagined becoming and the person I actually believed myself to be.

So I made the contract simple.

I would publish one article every week.

That was it. Not become famous. Not make money. Not build a massive audience overnight. Just one article a week.

At first, there was not much evidence that anything was working. Some weeks felt stronger than others. Some ideas came together quickly, while others felt like I was dragging the words across the finish line.

But the point was not perfection.

The point was keeping the promise.

And week after week, that promise started to change how I saw myself. I did not become a writer because I waited until I felt like one. I became one because I kept writing.

You are not just building a habit. You are building a case for who you are becoming.

You can read more about my journey here:

The Three-Part Contract

If you want to become more disciplined, I think the contract has to be simple enough to remember and practical enough to repeat.

Here is the system:

1. Make it small.
Your contract should be smaller than your ego wants it to be. “I’m going to change my whole life” sounds inspiring, but it is usually too vague to survive Tuesday afternoon.

• “I’m going to write for ten minutes,”

• “I’m going to walk after work,” or

• “I’m going to read five pages”

is something you can actually keep.

2. Make it visible.
A contract needs evidence. Put it somewhere you can see it. Track it in a notebook. Add it to your calendar. Put a reminder on your phone. The goal is not to obsess over the streak. The goal is to create proof that you are becoming the kind of person you said you wanted to be.

3. Make it repeatable.
The best contract is one you can return to even after a bad day. Missing once does not mean you failed. The danger is letting one missed day become the story that you are no longer the kind of person who follows through.

That’s it.

Small. Visible. Repeatable.

Because the real reward of discipline is not just productivity. It is self-trust.

Every time you keep a small promise to yourself, you become a little more believable to yourself. Not perfectly. Not dramatically. Not every single time.

But enough to keep going.

And that, in my opinion, is where discipline really begins.

Not with motivation. Not with optimization. But with one quiet promise, kept often enough, until you finally start to believe yourself again.

One of those things was books.

As I laid them out together, I realized I wasn’t just looking at a pile of books. I was looking at a record of the last few years of my life.

Books are fascinating because their value is deeply personal. Sometimes you read one at the right time, take one idea from it, and only realize years later how much it shaped the way you think.

Somewhere around four years ago, I started taking my life more seriously. Not perfectly. Not all at once. But I started asking better questions about money, discipline, anxiety, ambition, career, health, purpose, relationships, and the kind of person I wanted to become.

Again and again, books became one of the places I went looking for answers.

I don’t think books magically changed my life. But they changed how I interpreted my life. They gave me language, perspective, comfort, and direction when I needed it.

So as I looked at that pile on the floor, I kept coming back to one thought:

Reading in your early 20s might be one of the highest-return things you can do for yourself.

And honestly, I don’t think you should ever stop.

Here are five reasons why…

Before we get into it, I included a full list at the end of this piece with 100+ books I’ve read over the last few years, organized by category.

And if you enjoy this type of content, consider subscribing to Present & Progressing, where I share reflections on personal growth, mindset, and navigating life with more intention from the perspective of someone in their 20s.

1. Books give you mentors you may never meet.

You may not have access to the smartest, wealthiest, or most experienced people in real life. Geography, money, age, job title, and social circles all create limits.

Books remove many of them.

René Descartes wrote that reading good books is like having a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.

I like that framing because a good book can feel like a one-way mentorship. You may never sit across from Marcus Aurelius, Naval Ravikant, Morgan Housel, Phil Knight, or Ben Horowitz, but you can still spend hours with their best thinking.

For the cost of a book, you can borrow lessons that took someone else decades to learn.

Books from my list that reinforced this idea:
Meditations, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, The Psychology of Money, Shoe Dog, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, How to Win Friends & Influence People, The Art of War, The Most Important Thing

2. Books expand your perspective.

It is very easy to mistake your worldview for the world view.

Books remind you that your experience is only one version of reality. They let you step inside someone else’s mind, culture, pain, ambition, imagination, or way of seeing the world.

Neil Gaiman once described books as “little empathy machines,” which feels like the perfect phrase. A good book can make your world feel bigger without requiring you to leave your room.

You begin to understand people you may never meet, places you may never go, and problems you may never personally experience.

Books from my list that reinforced this idea:
Man’s Search for Meaning, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, Hillbilly Elegy, Into the Wild, Nowhere for Very Long, To Shake the Sleeping Self, Vagabonding, The Boys in the Boat, The Weirdest People in the World, Nexus

3. Books remind you that your problems are not uniquely yours.

Your early 20s can feel very isolating.

You can convince yourself that you are the only person who feels behind, anxious, confused, restless, insecure, ambitious, or unsure of what to do next.

Books have a way of proving otherwise.

C.S. Lewis wrote about reading as a way to become “more than ourselves,” to see with other eyes and feel with other hearts. That is one of the most comforting parts of reading. It reminds you that people have wrestled with fear, grief, purpose, uncertainty, love, ambition, and meaning long before you arrived.

A good book may not solve your problems, but it can give you language for them. And sometimes, language is the first form of relief.

Books from my list that reinforced this idea:
The Defining Decade, The Body Keeps the Score, Living a Non-Anxious Life, The Wisdom of Insecurity, The Untethered Soul, The Power of Now, 10% Happier, Tuesdays With Morrie, The Last Lecture, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

4. Books expand your sense of what is possible.

Books have a way of loosening the grip of the default path.

They show you different ways to work, build wealth, travel, think, create, live, and define success. Sometimes all it takes is seeing one person live differently to realize you have more options than you thought.

calls this The Pathless Path, which is a fitting phrase for the kind of life that becomes possible when you stop assuming there is only one correct route.

A good book can make your future feel less fixed.

Books from my list that reinforced this idea:
The Pathless Path, The 4-Hour Workweek, Die With Zero, The 5 Types of Wealth, The Millionaire Fastlane, I Will Teach You to Be Rich, The Simple Path to Wealth, Your Money or Your Life, Set for Life, The Comfort Crisis, Four Thousand Weeks

5. Books make you better in conversation and connection.

Being well-read is not about sounding smart.

It is about becoming more useful, curious, and connected. Books give you better questions, better references, and better recommendations to offer other people.

Neil Pasricha’s 3 Books podcast is built around a simple question: what are the three most formative books in someone’s life? I like that because books naturally create deeper conversations. They reveal what people value, what they are wrestling with, and what has shaped how they see the world.

A good book recommendation can be a gift. And the more you read, the more you can give.

Books from my list that reinforced this idea:
How to Win Friends & Influence People, The Go-Giver, Think Again, Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Instant Rapport, Set Boundaries, Find Peace, Same As Ever, The 5 Types of Wealth

Reading is not a phase.

The reason I say you should read in your early 20s, and forever, is because reading is not something you graduate from.

The more you learn, the more you realize how much you do not know.

There is a quote often attributed to Harry S. Truman that says,

“The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.”

I think about that often.

So many of the problems we believe are new are just old questions wearing modern clothes. Money. Power. Anxiety. Ambition. Love. Discipline. Meaning. Fear. Human nature does not change as much as we think it does.

Books remind you of that.

They keep you humble. They keep you curious. They keep you from becoming too impressed with your own perspective.

And maybe that is the real value of reading. Not that you eventually arrive at all the answers, but that you get better at asking the questions.

As promised, below is a categorized list of 100+ books I’ve read over the last few years.

This is not a list of books everyone needs to read. Some I loved. Some I probably outgrew. Some gave me one idea and that was enough.

But looking at them together, I can see the questions I was asking in different seasons of my life.

Questions about money, discipline, anxiety, ambition, career, health, purpose, relationships, and what kind of person I wanted to become.

Hopefully, one of them helps you find the next question worth asking. Enjoy!

Personal Growth, Mindset & Self-Improvement

Atomic Habits — James Clear
As a Man Thinketh — James Allen
The Magic of Thinking Big — David Schwartz
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck — Mark Manson
Everything Is F*cked — Mark Manson
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff — Richard Carlson
The Four Agreements — Don Miguel Ruiz
The Three Questions — Don Miguel Ruiz
The Gap and the Gain — Dan Sullivan & Dr. Benjamin Hardy
Feel-Good Productivity — Ali Abdaal
The 5AM Club — Robin Sharma
The 80/20 Principle — Richard Koch
Unlimited Power — Tony Robbins
The Power of Your Subconscious Mind — Joseph Murphy
Failing Forward — John C. Maxwell
The Energy Bus — Jon Gordon
GRIT — Angela Duckworth
The Happiness Advantage — Shawn Achor

Philosophy, Stoicism & Inner Life

Meditations — Marcus Aurelius
The Daily Stoic — Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman
The Obstacle Is the Way — Ryan Holiday
Ego Is the Enemy — Ryan Holiday
Stillness Is the Key — Ryan Holiday
Discipline Is Destiny — Ryan Holiday
Right Thing, Right Now — Ryan Holiday
The Power of Now — Eckhart Tolle
The Untethered Soul — Michael A. Singer
The Surrender Experiment — Michael A. Singer
The Wisdom of Insecurity — Alan Watts
You Are Here — Thich Nhat Hanh
The Alchemist — Paulo Coelho
Man’s Search for Meaning — Viktor Frankl
Ikigai — Héctor García & Francesc Miralles

Money, Personal Finance & Investing

The Psychology of Money — Morgan Housel
Same As Ever — Morgan Housel
The Art of Spending Money — Morgan Housel
I Will Teach You to Be Rich — Ramit Sethi
The Simple Path to Wealth — JL Collins
Your Money or Your Life — Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez
The Millionaire Next Door — Thomas J. Stanley & William D. Danko
The Richest Man in Babylon — George S. Clason
The Millionaire Fastlane — MJ DeMarco
The 5 Types of Wealth — Sahil Bloom
Broke Millennial — Erin Lowry
Breaking Free From Broke — George Kamel
FIRE for Dummies — Michael J. Withey
Plan Your Prosperity — Ken Fisher
The Most Important Thing — Howard Marks
Think & Grow Rich — Napoleon Hill
Wealth Your Way — Wealth Your Way Insights

Real Estate, Housing & Financial Independence

Set for Life — Scott Trench
The House Hacking Strategy — Craig Curelop
First-Time Home Buyer: The Complete Playbook — Scott Trench & Mindy Jensen
Real Estate Investing for Dummies — Eric Tyson & Robert S. Griswold
The Millionaire Real Estate Investor — Gary Keller
Stop Working & Start Investing — Logan Allec

Career, Business, Leadership & Work

Deep Work — Cal Newport
Building a Second Brain — Tiago Forte
Good to Great — Jim Collins
Start With Why — Simon Sinek
Leaders Eat Last — Simon Sinek
CEO Excellence — Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller & Vikram Malhotra
The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz
Shoe Dog — Phil Knight
The Go-Giver — Bob Burg & John David Mann
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant — Eric Jorgenson
The 4-Hour Workweek — Tim Ferriss
The Pathless Path — Paul Millerd
The NCG Factor — Larry Kaufman
Velocity — Ajaz Ahmed & Stefan Olander
The Art of War — Sun Tzu
The 48 Laws of Power — Robert Greene

Relationships, Communication & Social Intelligence

How to Win Friends & Influence People — Dale Carnegie
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 — Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves
Instant Rapport — Michael Brooks
Set Boundaries, Find Peace — Nedra Glover Tawwab
Surrounded by Idiots — Thomas Erikson
Notes on Being a Man — Scott Galloway
Strangers to Temptation — Scott Gould

Health, Anxiety, Trauma & Well-Being

The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk
Living a Non-Anxious Life — John Mark Comer
10% Happier — Dan Harris
The Emotion Code — Bradley Nelson
Outlive — Peter Attia
Why We Sleep — Matthew Walker
The Comfort Crisis — Michael Easter

Adventure, Travel, Memoir & Life Experience

Greenlights — Matthew McConaughey
Poems & Prayers — Matthew McConaughey
Into the Wild — Jon Krakauer
To Shake the Sleeping Self — Jedidiah Jenkins
Vagabonding — Rolf Potts
Nowhere for Very Long — Brianna Madia
Endurance — Alfred Lansing
The Boys in the Boat — Daniel James Brown
Bounce Back — Travis Mills
Never Finished — David Goggins
Be Water, My Friend — Shannon Lee
Teammate — David Ross
The Last Lecture — Randy Pausch
Tuesdays With Morrie — Mitch Albom
Hillbilly Elegy — J.D. Vance
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace — Jeff Hobbs

Psychology, Thinking & Human Behavior

Think Again — Adam Grant
Range — David Epstein
The Tipping Point — Malcolm Gladwell
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks — Yuval Noah Harari
The Weirdest People in the World — Joseph Henrich

Fiction & Literature

Fahrenheit 451 — Ray Bradbury
What Makes Sammy Run? — Budd Schulberg

Time, Mortality & Intentional Living

Four Thousand Weeks — Oliver Burkeman
Die With Zero — Bill Perkins
The Defining Decade — Meg Jay

That’s the list.

Some of these books changed the way I think. Some gave me one useful idea. Some simply found me at the right time.

My hope is that one of them does the same for you.

If you enjoyed this piece, consider subscribing to Present & Progressing, where I write about personal growth, mindset, discipline, reflection, and navigating life with more intention from the perspective of someone in their 20s.

Subscribe now

Thanks for reading.

At the time, I thought I was writing about contradiction. The tension of wanting more while still being grateful. Craving freedom while needing structure. Building confidence while trying to stay humble.

But I think I was really writing about something older than I realized.

Something people have wrestled with long before Substack, social media, career pressure, productivity hacks, or whatever modern language we use to describe the same internal struggle.

I was writing about the difficult art of finding the middle.

The Golden Mean

Recently, I came across Aristotle’s idea of the Golden Mean in Nicomachean Ethics, and it put a name to what I had been circling.

In simple terms, Aristotle believed virtue often exists between two extremes: excess and deficiency. Courage sits between cowardice and recklessness. Generosity sits between stinginess and wastefulness. Confidence sits between self-erasure and arrogance.

The point is not that the middle is always perfectly equal. It is not some bland compromise where you water yourself down until nothing sharp remains. The middle requires judgment. It asks you to understand the moment, the circumstance, and yourself.

That is what fascinated me most.

So many of the things we treat as modern struggles are not new at all. The language changes. The platforms change. The pressure changes. But the human question remains strangely familiar:

How much is enough?

Modern Problems, Ancient Patterns

That question feels especially relevant now.

We live in a world that constantly pulls us toward extremes. Work harder. Rest more. Be ambitious. Be content. Build your personal brand. Stop caring what people think. Optimize your life. Let go. Move faster. Slow down.

No wonder so many people feel split in half.

Aristotle was not writing about inboxes, algorithms, career timelines, or comparison traps on the internet. But he was writing about human nature. About how easily we can become too much or too little of something. Too passive or too restless. Too rigid or too loose. Too proud or too self-doubting.

The details have changed. The pattern has not.

10 Balances That Shape a Full Life

This is where the idea becomes practical.

If living well requires finding the middle, then the question becomes: the middle of what?

Because this tension does not show up in one area of life. It shows up everywhere. In how we work. How we rest. How we speak. How we love. How we grow. How we see ourselves.

Some people become consumed by ambition. Others confuse contentment with staying still. Some people build discipline until their life becomes rigid. Others chase freedom until they lose direction.

The hard part is not simply knowing which side is “good” or “bad.”

The hard part is learning when one side has started to take over.

So here are 10 balances that I think shape a fuller life, along with people who, in different ways, seemed to practice them well.

1. Ambition & Contentment

What it means: Ambition gives your life direction. Contentment keeps you from turning every achievement into a temporary checkpoint before the next thing.

An example worth studying: John Wooden — one of the most successful coaches in college basketball history, but his philosophy was not built around chasing trophies. He defined success as peace of mind that comes from knowing you made the effort to become the best you are capable of becoming.

Read more: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court by John Wooden

Why it matters: Ambition becomes healthier when success is measured by effort, character, and consistency instead of the next external marker. Contentment is what allows you to respect the work while you are still in the middle of becoming better.

2. Discipline & Flexibility

What it means: Discipline gives your life structure. Flexibility keeps that structure from becoming a cage.

An example worth studying: Benjamin Franklin — a writer, inventor, diplomat, and lifelong self-improver who famously tracked his virtues and built systems for personal growth. But Franklin was also adaptable enough to move between worlds: science, politics, publishing, diplomacy, and public service.

Read more: Atomic Habits by James Clear

Why it matters: Discipline is useful because it helps you act with intention instead of impulse. But when your systems become too rigid, they stop supporting your life and start controlling it.

3. Confidence & Humility

What it means: Confidence gives you the courage to believe you have something worth contributing. Humility reminds you that your perspective is incomplete, and that growth requires staying teachable.

An example worth studying: Abraham Lincoln — Lincoln had enough confidence to lead through the Civil War, but he was also willing to bring former political rivals into his cabinet, including William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates. That combination of conviction and openness is part of what made his leadership so unusual.

Read more: Think Again by Adam Grant

Why it matters: Confidence helps you step into rooms, opportunities, and responsibilities without shrinking yourself. Humility keeps that confidence from closing your mind to counsel, correction, and the possibility that someone else may see what you cannot.

4. Courage & Discernment

What it means: Courage helps you move toward what is difficult, uncomfortable, or risky. Discernment keeps you from mistaking recklessness, anger, or impulse for bravery.

An example worth studying: Martin Luther King Jr. — King’s courage was not reckless. His philosophy of nonviolence was active, disciplined, and strategic: it resisted injustice without trying to humiliate or destroy the opponent, and it accepted suffering without retaliation.

Read more: The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich

Why it matters: Courage without discernment can become noise, ego, or unnecessary damage. The deeper strength is knowing what is worth standing for, what is worth risking, and how to act without losing sight of the outcome you actually hope to create.

5. Reflection & Action

What it means: Reflection helps you understand what matters. Action keeps that understanding from becoming something you only think about, but never live.

An example worth studying: Theodore Roosevelt — Roosevelt was not just a man of motion; he was also a serious reader and writer. The Theodore Roosevelt Association describes him as a “voracious reader and prolific writer” who authored more than 35 books, while the National Park Service notes that, as president, he used his authority to protect roughly 230 million acres of public land.

Read more: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Why it matters: Reflection gives your life depth, but action gives it evidence. At some point, the things you think about, journal about, and talk about have to become choices you actually make.

6. Acceptance & Agency

What it means: Acceptance means being honest about what is true. Agency means remembering that your response still belongs to you.

An example worth studying: Viktor Frankl — Frankl’s life and work are among the clearest examples of this balance. Man’s Search for Meaning is rooted in the idea that even in times of despair, human beings can still search for meaning, purpose, and strength.

Read more: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Why it matters: Acceptance is not giving up. Agency is not pretending you control everything. The middle is learning to face reality honestly, then asking what is still yours to do.

7. Solitude & Connection

What it means: Solitude gives you space to hear yourself clearly. Connection keeps you from mistaking isolation for peace.

An example worth studying: Henry David Thoreau — Thoreau is often remembered for his time at Walden Pond, but he was not simply disappearing from the world. Walden was an experiment in deliberate living, and his reflections were eventually turned outward through writing, critique, and public thought.

Read more: Solitude: A Return to the Self by Anthony Storr

Why it matters: Solitude can help you understand yourself, but connection is what keeps that self from becoming closed off. The healthiest relationships are not an escape from being alone; they are an extension of knowing yourself well enough to show up honestly.

8. Curiosity & Focus

What it means: Curiosity opens doors. Focus helps you walk through one of them long enough to actually build something.

An example worth studying: Charles Darwin — Darwin’s curiosity led him to observe nature deeply, collect specimens, question assumptions, and follow evidence across years of study. But curiosity alone was not enough; he also had the focus to organize those observations into a theory that changed how we understand life.

Read more: Range by David Epstein

*Bonus read: Deep Work by Cal Newport

Why it matters: Curiosity helps you explore what is possible, but focus is what lets something meaningful take shape. Without focus, even your best ideas can stay scattered across too many open doors.

9. Generosity & Boundaries

What it means: Generosity opens your life outward. Boundaries keep you from confusing love, service, or kindness with self-abandonment.

An example worth studying: Dolly Parton — Parton has built a public legacy around generosity, especially through her Imagination Library, which has mailed millions of free books to children. But she has also maintained a strong sense of ownership, privacy, and self-definition across her career.

Read more: Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab

Why it matters: Giving is most sustainable when it comes from fullness rather than fear. Without boundaries, even kindness can slowly turn into resentment.

10. Seriousness & Play

What it means: Seriousness gives your life depth. Play keeps that depth from turning into heaviness.

An example worth studying: Julia Child — Child took food seriously, studying French cooking with real discipline and helping bring it to an American audience. But she also made the process feel joyful, imperfect, funny, and human.

Read more: Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown

Why it matters: A full life needs more than responsibility, productivity, and self-improvement. Without play, even meaningful work can start to feel mechanical.

The Work of Finding the Middle

I don’t think any of these balances are things we solve once.

You do not become ambitious and content once. You do not become disciplined and flexible once. You do not learn confidence, humility, courage, discernment, generosity, or play one time and then get to check them off forever.

Life keeps changing the equation.

A version of you may need more discipline in one season and more flexibility in another. More solitude at one point, more connection at another. More courage in one chapter, more discernment in the next.

That is what makes the middle so difficult. It is not a fixed point. It is a practice.

And maybe that is why extremes can be so tempting. They feel simpler. They give us a clean identity. The ambitious one. The disciplined one. The independent one. The generous one. The serious one.

But a full life usually asks more of us than that.

Closing Thoughts

When I first wrote about living between two truths, I was trying to describe a feeling.

Now, I think I understand it a little differently.

The middle is not where we go to avoid choosing. It is where we go to practice wisdom.

It is where we learn to want more without despising what we have. To build structure without becoming trapped by it. To take life seriously without losing the ability to laugh. To become better without treating our current selves like unfinished drafts we are supposed to be ashamed of.

Maybe that is what Present & Progressing has always been about.

Not choosing presence over progress. Not choosing progress over presence.

But learning how to live in the tension between them with more honesty, patience, and intention.

The middle is not the easy way out.

It is the work.

And if we practice it long enough, maybe it becomes the way we build a fuller life.

Till next time.

Maybe that was a sign to sit my ass in the chair and get to work.

The problem was, I had no idea what to write about.

Then I realized I had spent most of the week in my own head. Doubting myself. Questioning what I am doing. Wondering where I am going. Thinking about the future, my purpose, my ambition, and whether I am actually building a life that feels like mine.

Most of these thoughts will probably pass with time. I know that.

But knowing a thought will pass does not make it feel any less real while you are in it.

So that is where this list came from.

Not from having everything figured out, but from trying to articulate the honest truth of navigating your 20s while being ambitious, uncertain, grateful, restless, hopeful, and occasionally overwhelmed all at the same time.

Because ambition is strange.

The truth is, being ambitious does not mean you have everything figured out. Sometimes it just means you are trying really hard to become someone you cannot fully see yet.

So this is not a list of lessons I have mastered.

It is a list of things I am still wrestling with as an ambitious 26-year-old.

Let’s get into it.

1. I am still trying to find the thing that feels like mine.

I am still working on finding my purpose, my ikigai, or whatever word you want to use for the thing that feels aligned with who you are. The frustrating part is the experimentation. Trying things, questioning things, getting excited, losing interest, pivoting, and wondering if you are being patient or just wasting time.

2. The old definition of success does not fully work anymore.

For a long time, success felt straightforward. Get good grades, get the degree, land the job, work hard, save money, move up. But now the definition feels fuzzier. Is success freedom? Impact? Peace? Meaningful work? Time? I do not think I have stopped wanting success. I think I am just less sure which version of it is actually mine.

3. Things can look good on paper and still feel unclear inside.

You can have the degrees, the career, the stability, the habits, and the momentum, and still feel off some days. External success does not automatically silence internal doubt. Sometimes you can be proud of the life you are building and still wonder if you are moving in the right direction.

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4. Rest feels uncomfortable when progress has become part of your identity.

When you are used to proving your value through output, slowing down can feel like falling behind. I know rest matters, but knowing that does not mean it always feels natural. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is sit still long enough to realize how tired you actually are.

5. I am grateful for my life, but I still want more from it.

This is a strange tension. I can be genuinely thankful for what I have and still feel pulled toward what else is possible. I am learning that ambition and gratitude are not opposites. Wanting more does not always mean you are ungrateful. Sometimes it just means you still see room to grow.

6. I am less afraid of failing than I am of never finding out what I am capable of.

Failure does not scare me as much as unrealized potential does. What scares me is waking up years from now and realizing I played it too safe. That I built a comfortable life at the expense of a meaningful one. It is not failure that haunts me. It is the possibility of never finding out what I could have become.

Quick check-in before we keep going.

If any of this feels familiar, you are probably not broken. You are probably just in that weird stage where you are old enough to know your choices matter, but young enough to still be unsure which ones will actually lead to the life you want.

Is that a note to myself?

Anyways, back to the list…

7. Every path I choose means letting another version of life go.

Opportunity cost used to feel like a business term. Now it feels personal. Every decision opens one door and quietly closes another. Where you live, what work you pursue, who you spend time with, how much risk you take, all of it shapes the life you end up living. Even good choices come with tradeoffs.

8. I want to build the future without missing the present.

I believe in long-term thinking. I believe in discipline, sacrifice, and doing hard things now for a better life later. But I also do not want to be so focused on building a future life that I miss the one I am already in. I want to seize the day without sabotaging the decade.

9. I cannot give every part of my life equal attention, even when they all matter.

Career, health, family, relationships, friends, money, creativity, rest, personal growth, and everything else all matter. But it is genuinely impossible to give every part of life equal attention at the same time. I am trying to learn that imbalance does not always mean failure. Sometimes it just means you are in a season.

10. I am more affected by comparison than I want to admit.

I think I do a decent job managing my social media consumption, but I am still affected by it. Comparison culture gets in, even when you know better. You can be proud of your life, open an app, and suddenly feel behind in ten seconds. That cannot be harmless.

11. Some days, my entire outlook changes with my mood.

Some days I feel inspired, grateful, motivated, and clear. Other days I feel doubtful, restless, uncertain, or disconnected from the exact same life. I am trying to remember that a temporary feeling does not deserve permanent authority. But in the moment, that is not always easy.

12. I am aware of the voice in my head, but I have not mastered it yet.

My mind still wanders. It creates stories, drafts narratives, assigns meaning, and tells me things before I have all the information. I am aware of the voice, but awareness is not the same as mastery. I am still learning not to believe every thought that passes through my mind.

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And maybe that is the honest truth of this whole list.

At 26, I am proud of how far I have come, but I am still very much in the middle of figuring things out.

I want purpose, but I am still experimenting.

I want success, but I am still redefining what that means.

I want progress, but I do not want to lose the ability to be present.

I want more, but I do not want to become ungrateful.

I want to make the most of my potential, but I do not want to turn my life into one long performance review.

Maybe that is what ambition feels like when you are still becoming.

Unclear does not mean lost. Unfinished does not mean failing. Restless does not mean ungrateful.

It just means there is still more life to live, more questions to ask, and more of yourself to meet.

Stay grounded. Keep working. Wishing you all the best.

Till next time.

The bright colors. The little clicking sound as it slows. The anticipation of where it could land. And then, suddenly, your whole situation changes because of a few degrees of rotation.

That’s the genius of Wheel of Fortune (and honestly, most game shows): it turns a chance event into a ritual. You step up, you take your spin, and for a moment, the world reduces down to a simple question:

Where is the wheel going to land?

Sure, the game show is fun. But what intrigued me was the idea behind it—where this concept of “fortune” even came from.

Long before it became a set piece under studio lights, the Wheel of Fortune was a serious symbol. Used to explain why life can flip so fast, why the powerful fall, why the struggling catch a break, and why nothing stays put for long.

The Ritual of Uncertainty

What’s funny is that the game show version is actually…pretty accurate.

• You can do everything right and still hit BANKRUPT.

• You can misread the puzzle at the last second.

• You can land on a big number and suddenly you’re “ahead,” even if nothing about you changed.

That’s the whole point of fortune. It’s not a reward system. It’s not fair. It’s not stable. It’s just…movement.

And when you zoom out, the wheel isn’t really about money or prizes. It’s a visual metaphor for the thing all of us experience, whether we admit it or not:

• Life has seasons.

• Things swing.

• You rise, you fall, you recover, you rebuild.

The main reason Wheel of Fortune is so entertaining is because it’s a dramatized version of something we already live with every day.

Which brings us to the question:

If this idea is so universal…, where did it come from in the first place?

Before It Was a Game

The first version of “fortune” wasn’t a wheel. It was a person. Ancient people looked at how unpredictable life was—good years turning bad, powerful people falling overnight, random breaks landing on the least “deserving”—and they gave that force a name. The Greeks called it Tyche, and the Romans called it Fortuna.

But early on, the symbol wasn’t a clean circle with spokes. It was more like something you couldn’t stand on. In older Roman writing and later commentary, Fortune is often pictured as unstable—like a rolling globe—because the point was never “here’s your reward,” it was “don’t build your identity on something that won’t hold still.”

The wheel comes in because it does something even better than a globe: it makes reversal obvious. It doesn’t just say “life is unstable.” It shows how life rotates people through positions. Up becomes down. Down becomes up. And no one gets to stay at the top forever. By the late Roman Republic, the “wheel of fortune” language is already in circulation in Latin literature, and later writers keep repeating it because it communicates the lesson instantly.

Then medieval Europe turns the concept into an image so clear you don’t even need to read. Artists keep depicting Fortuna turning a massive wheel—often like a mill wheel—with people strapped to it at different points: someone rising, someone ruling, someone falling, someone crushed. The picture spreads through manuscripts, churches, and popular culture until the Wheel of Fortune becomes cultural shorthand for one hard truth:

whatever you’re standing on right now isn’t guaranteed.

What the Wheel Means Now

If I’m being honest, the Wheel of Fortune isn’t just some old symbol to me. It’s a pattern I’ve watched play out in real life.

There have been weeks where I started on a high. A big opportunity. A door opening. That feeling of “wow, things are finally clicking!”

And then by the end of the same week, I’m getting news that humbles me to my core—like learning an extended family member has a terminal illness.

That’s the wheel.

It’s why people ask, “Why do these things always happen to me?” or “When can I catch a break?” Because when the wheel turns quickly, it makes life feel personal. Like you’re being singled out. Like the universe is messing with you.

But I don’t think the real lesson is “life is unfair” (even though it is). I think the lesson is simpler:

Don’t get attached to your position on the wheel.

When things are going well, the risk is hubris. You start thinking you’ve got life figured out. You start subtly tying your identity to outcomes—status, momentum, money, praise, the version of you that looks good on paper.

And when things aren’t going well, the risk is the opposite. You overthink. You ruminate. You start rewriting your whole approach because you’re in a rut. You’re tempted to throw it all away instead of just… staying steady and working your way out.

So, the wheel forces a question I keep coming back to:

What part of me stays consistent when life swings?

For me, the answer is pretty clear:

Discipline. Faith in something bigger than myself. Character. Routines. Relationships. Curiosity. Service. Health. Integrity. Gratitude. A positive outlook that doesn’t ignore reality but refuses to be owned by it.

That’s what I want to build a life on—because the wheel isn’t going to stop turning.

3 Ways to Practice

1) Don’t ask “why me?”—ask “what now?”

I get it. Why does this always happen to me is a human question.

But it’s usually not a helpful one.

“What now?” is better. It keeps you in motion. It keeps you grounded. It turns pain into presence and anxiety into action. You can acknowledge what’s hard without spiraling into resentment.

2) Stay humble when you’re up, stay steady when you’re down

When things are going well: enjoy it. Be grateful. But don’t start worshiping the outcome. Don’t act like you’re untouchable. Keep doing the basics. Keep showing up. Keep serving people. That’s how you avoid the crash that comes from getting too attached to the high.

When things are going poorly: don’t panic-edit your whole life. Don’t overcorrect. Don’t throw away the routines that got you here. You’re allowed to notice that things aren’t going your way without using that as evidence that you’re failing.

3) Build “between-spins” anchors

The wheel makes you reactive. Anchors make you stable.

Pick a few things you return to no matter what season you’re in:

• movement + sleep (because your mind lies when you’re drained)

• journaling / reflection (because clarity comes when you get it out of your head)

• relationships (because isolation makes everything heavier)

• faith / gratitude (because it keeps perspective bigger than the moment)

• service (because helping someone else gets you out of your own spiral)

These aren’t habits that guarantee you’ll always win.

They’re habits that make sure you don’t lose yourself when you don’t.

In Closing

The Wheel of Fortune isn’t just an ancient symbol or a game show gimmick. It’s a reminder.

Life is going to spin. Your circumstances will change. Some weeks will start with a win and end with a gut punch. Some seasons will feel unfair. Some will feel like a gift. Either way, the wheel keeps moving.

So, the goal isn’t to “beat” fortune.

The goal is to stop letting your peace depend on where you are on the wheel.

When you’re up, stay humble. Keep doing the basics. Don’t worship the outcome.
When you’re down, stay steady. Don’t panic-edit your whole life. Don’t throw it away.

Ask “what now?” instead of “why me?”
Return to your anchors.
Show up anyway.

Because the real flex isn’t being lucky.

It’s being the kind of person who can stay grounded… whether the wheel lands in your favor or not.

Till next week.

But I have lived enough life to notice certain lessons that keep showing up in my work, relationships, health, writing, and ambition.

A big reason I started writing on Substack was to share what I’m learning in real time, not from some mountaintop of wisdom, but from the middle of it.

So this list is not a rulebook. It is simply 26 things I would tell my younger self if I had the chance.

Some came from experience. Some came from failure. Some came from people much wiser than me. And some I am still learning, slowly and imperfectly.

My hope is that one of these gives you something useful to hold onto in whatever phase of life you are in right now.

And if you only skim the list, at least read number 26.

Let’s get to it.

The Inner Game

Before we get into discipline, ambition, relationships, or anything external, I think the first battle is internal.

So much of your life is shaped by the way you see yourself, the stories you keep repeating, and the meaning you assign to what is happening around you. If you can start changing the way you relate to yourself, a lot of the outside stuff becomes easier to handle.

1. No one is thinking about you as much as you think they are.

Most people are too busy managing their own insecurities, problems, plans, and self-image to obsess over yours. The thing you are replaying in your head for the 47th time is probably something they forgot about 10 minutes after it happened.

2. The stories you repeat to yourself become the life you live.

Your internal dialogue is not harmless background noise. The thoughts you rehearse repeatedly eventually become the limits, beliefs, and identity you operate from.

Read more here ↓

3. Comparison really is the thief of joy.

Social media has made it too easy to compare your normal Tuesday to someone else’s highlight reel. The more you measure your life against someone else’s, the harder it becomes to appreciate what is right in front of you.

4. It is usually not that deep.

Journaling has taught me that so many things that once felt overwhelming eventually became things I figured out, moved through, or forgot about. We suffer far more in imagination than reality.

5. Make peace with the phase of life you are in.

You will not be here forever, even if this season feels confusing, awkward, or uncertain. You never step in the same river twice, and one day you may miss parts of the life you are currently trying to rush through.

Ownership and Action

Once you start changing the way you relate to yourself, the next lesson becomes pretty clear: nobody is going to do the work for you. Your life only starts to change when you take ownership and act.

6. No one is coming to save you.

This is both terrifying and freeing. Terrifying because it means you have to take responsibility, but freeing because it means you are allowed to build, change, move, start over, and choose.

7. What happened to you may not be your fault, but healing is still your responsibility.

You may not have chosen the pain, disappointment, or circumstances you inherited. But you are still the one who has to decide what to do with them.

8. Start doing.

Thinking, planning, researching, and reflecting all have their place, but action is what actually changes you. At some point, you have to stop negotiating with yourself and begin.

9. Motivation is not the same thing as discipline.

Motivation is great when it shows up, but it is unreliable. Discipline is what carries you when the feeling disappears.

Read more here ↓

10. Stop waiting until you feel ready.

You are rarely going to feel fully prepared before doing the thing that changes you. Confidence usually comes after action, not before it.

The Long Game

But ownership is not always loud or dramatic.

Most of the time, it looks like doing small things consistently, trusting the process, and learning how to keep showing up before the results arrive.

11. Get comfortable putting in effort without seeing immediate results.

Some of the most important work you do will not pay off right away. That does not mean it is wasted.

12. Respect compounding.

Money compounds, but so do habits, skills, relationships, and small daily choices. Most major life changes are not the result of one massive decision, but the result of repeated actions over time.

13. There is no finish line.

You will reach one goal, and then another one will appear. That is not a flaw in the system, but you have to be careful not to attach your entire identity to the scoreboard.

14. Add constraints to your life on purpose.

Convenience is not always your friend. In a world designed to make everything easier, faster, and more addictive, sometimes the best thing you can do is intentionally make the right things harder to avoid.

15. Keep learning across multiple domains.

Do not box yourself into one narrow skill set too early. The more disciplines you can pull from, the more unique and valuable your perspective becomes.

Read more here ↓

Health, Values, and Direction

But playing the long game requires more than discipline and patience.

You also need energy, direction, and a clear understanding of what actually matters to you.

16. Take your health seriously before life forces you to.

Energy is one of the most underrated advantages in life. When your body feels better, your work, relationships, confidence, mood, and ambition all improve with it.

17. Know what you value before the world decides for you.

If you do not define what matters, culture will gladly hand you a checklist. Money, status, attention, titles, followers, approval—some of those may matter, but they should not become your life by accident.

Read more here ↓

18. Do not make your career your entire identity.

Work matters, but it is not the whole story. A job can give you purpose, structure, and pride, but it cannot carry the full weight of your meaning.

19. Find something that reminds you the world is bigger than yourself.

That could be religion, philosophy, volunteering, coaching, nature, service, or family. Whatever it is, you need something that pulls you out of your own head and reminds you that your problems are not the whole universe.

20. Let go of control.

Life is going to keep changing the conditions. You cannot control the wind, the timing, the setback, or the storm, but you can adjust your sails.

People Will Shape Your Life

And as much as personal growth can feel individual, your life will never be shaped by you alone.

The people around you matter more than you think. Who you love, who you learn from, who you surround yourself with, and who you let speak into your life will quietly shape the direction you go.

21. Be careful who you choose to build a life with.

Few decisions will shape your future more than who you marry or commit your life to. Choose someone whose values, character, and direction make the hard parts of life easier to face, not harder.

22. Be intentional about community.

Connection does not happen as automatically as it used to. In a world retreating into screens, you may have to actively seek out people who challenge you, support you, and remind you what real life feels like.

23. You can only go so far alone.

Find mentors, teachers, coaches, or people who have walked the path before you. If you cannot find one organically, there is no shame in paying to learn from someone who can help you shorten the learning curve.

24. Increase your surface area for luck.

Luck often looks random from the outside, but you can put yourself in better positions to receive it. Meet people, share your work, say yes to new rooms, start conversations, and let the world know what you are building.

Read more here ↓

25. Choose friends who speak highly of you when you are not in the room.

That is one of the best tests of friendship. The right people protect your name, celebrate your wins, and create opportunities for you even when there is nothing in it for them.

The Final Reminder

And if all of these lessons point back to one final reminder, it is this: do not shrink your life before it even has a chance to unfold.

You are still becoming, and the future may be much bigger than the version of it you can currently imagine.

26. Do not put a cap on your ambition.

You are capable of becoming someone you cannot even fully picture yet. With self-belief, skill, consistent effort, good timing, and a little bit of luck, your life can look completely different five years from now.

Do not let your current circumstances convince you that this is all there is. Do not let fear disguise itself as realism. Do not let the version of yourself you are today limit the version of yourself you could become tomorrow.

At 26, I do not have everything figured out. Not even close. But I do believe this: you are allowed to want more from your life, and you are allowed to go build it.

Not because it will be easy.

Not because it is guaranteed.

But because the alternative is living a life quietly capped by your own disbelief.

I sincerely hope that you received some value from this piece.

Wishing you all the best.

Till next time.