If I could send a short note back to myself in my twenties, it would not be a strategy. It would be a handful of things I had to learn the slow way, written plainly enough to actually land.
- Develop your system. Don’t rely on willpower or mood to carry you — build the scaffolding that carries you when both run out.
- Perfectionism is harmful; life is about moving forward. A finished, imperfect thing teaches you more than a perfect thing you never ship.
- The most precious lessons are in your everyday life — not in grand events, but in the ordinary days you are tempted to overlook.
- Your ego is not you. The voice defending your image is a passenger, not the driver.
- Don’t stereotype yourself. The labels you accept quietly become the ceiling you live under.
- Tolerate failures — leave room for others and for yourself to learn. A space where mistakes are survivable is a space where people actually grow.
- You cannot calculate it all. Sometimes you make a decision with little information at hand, and you take responsibility for it.
- Character is proven in wars, not in peace. Comfort flatters everyone; it is pressure that shows you who you really are.
(Reflections shaped in part by a friend’s garden of thoughts.)
Related: Regrets of the Dying
A hospice nurse, Bronnie Ware, famously recorded the five most common regrets of her patients. They read like a reply to the list above, sent from the other end of a life:
- I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
- I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
- I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
- I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
- I wish that I had let myself be happier.