40 Life Lessons at 40:
Introduction
Today is my 40th birthday. Here are all the things that I know at 40 that I wish I knew at 20. Starting with number one, your relationship with others is a direct reflection of your relationship with yourself. If you treat yourself poorly, then you'll unconsciously seek out and tolerate others who treat you poorly as well. If you treat yourself with dignity and respect, then you will only tolerate others who treat you with dignity and respect too.
Number two, the only way to feel better about yourself is to do things worth feeling good about. Respect is earned not given. Number three, the only failure is not trying. The only rejection is not asking. The only mistake is not risking anything. Success and failure are fuzzy concepts that only exist in your mind before you do something, not after. After the fact, everything will be a mixture of both. The only real failure is doing nothing.
Relationships and Self-Improvement
1. Your Relationship with Yourself
Your relationship with others is a direct reflection of your relationship with yourself. If you treat yourself poorly, then you'll unconsciously seek out and tolerate others who treat you poorly as well. If you treat yourself with dignity and respect, then you will only tolerate others who treat you with dignity and respect too.
2. Earning Respect
The only way to feel better about yourself is to do things worth feeling good about. Respect is earned not given.
3. Embracing Failure and Rejection
The only failure is not trying. The only rejection is not asking. The only mistake is not risking anything. Success and failure are fuzzy concepts that only exist in your mind before you do something, not after. After the fact, everything will be a mixture of both. The only real failure is doing nothing.
Self-Acceptance and Growth
4. Self-Sufficiency
No one is coming to save you. No single thing will solve all of your problems. No goal, no achievement, no relationship, no one will ever fix you. You will always feel mildly inadequate and somewhat dissatisfied with your life. Nothing is wrong with you for feeling this way. On the contrary, it might be the most normal thing about you.
5. Being the Partner You Want
Be the partner you want to have. If you want a healthy and fit partner, then be healthy and fit yourself. If you want a loyal and trustworthy partner, then be loyal and trustworthy yourself. To put it another way, would you date you? If not, then that's a fucking problem.
6. The Value of Consistency
The most valuable things in life compound over a long period of time. I'm talking about health, wealth, knowledge, confidence, relationships. These things will frustrate you when you're young because they are slow, but if you start building them from a young age and you don't stop, by the time you're in your 30s and 40s, you'll have an incredible life.
7. The Law of Diminishing Returns
The most sexy and exciting things in life are the opposite, they start out extremely fun, but then have intense, diminishing returns. When you're young, these things distract you and occupy a lot of your time and attention. This applies to social media, casual sex, drugs and alcohol, video games, gambling, vacations, and blow jobs. The first time is incredible, the second time is almost as good, but then it's all downhill from there. Well, except for the blow jobs.
8. Focus on What Matters
If you're not turning down things that excite you, then you're not focused enough on something that matters. Our world is overflowing with stimulation and opportunity. If you aren't struggling to turn down options, then you haven't correctly prioritized what matters to you.
9. Taking Responsibility for Your Problems
Taking responsibility for all of your problems alleviates more suffering than it creates. Most people assume that if you take responsibility for all the pain in your life, then you will just feel worse about it, but the opposite is actually true. The more responsibility you take, the more you empower yourself to actually do something about that pain.
10. The Power of Blame
You give power to who you blame. When you blame someone else for your problems, you are giving them power over you. You are allowing them to define and dictate your happiness and wellbeing. This is fucking stupid, so don't do it, it's not worth it.
Personal Growth and Mindset
11. Actions Speak Louder Than Words
If you have to tell someone you're that, then you're not that. A rich man doesn't feel a need to show people he's rich. A smart man doesn't feel a need to tell people he's smart. A confident person doesn't have to show people that he's confident, he just is. Don't say it, be it.
12. Taking Action
Motivation is not the cause of action, but the effect. If you wanna feel motivated to do something, take the smallest action towards doing it, then let the momentum carry you forward.
13. Love and Commitment
Love is not the cause of commitment but the effect. You don't wait until you have a perfect relationship to commit to a person, you commit to the person in order to create the perfect relationship.
14. Passion and Good Work
Passion is not the cause of good work, but the effect. You don't wait until you find something you love doing. You learn to do something well in the process of developing competency and agency then causes you to become passionate about it.
15. Sacrifices and Inherent Sacrifice
The person you marry is the person you fight with, the house you buy is the house you repair, the dream job you take is the job you stress over. Everything comes with an inherent sacrifice to it. Whatever makes us feel good will inevitably also make us feel bad.
16. The Meaningful Stress
A happy life is not a life without stress, it's a life of meaningful stress.
17. Exercise as an Investment
Don't view exercise as an exchange for something. You don't work out to lose a few pounds or earn that hamburger and ice cream. Instead, view exercise as an investment. For every unit of energy you put in, you'll receive multiple units of energy back. The catch is that these units of energy you get back will be spread out over weeks, months, and years. This is why exercising hardcore occasionally is far inferior than exercising a little bit every day.
Bonus Lesson: Meditation and Headspace
18. The Power of Meditation
Here's a bonus thing that I kind of knew at 20, but I definitely know at 40, and that is meditation makes everything else in life easier. Meditation is one of the most scientifically validated mental practices you can do. It's been shown to reduce stress, improve sleep, increase memory and focus, and improve general feelings of wellbeing.
19. Introducing Headspace
Headspace, the meditation app, is a great tool for developing a meditation practice. It has thousands of hours of guided meditations to help you develop a practice for yourself. I've been meditating since I was 18 and it's been one of the most useful practices that I've found to help me improve my life.
Personal Reflection and Life Lessons
20. Trusting Others
Trust people, most of them are good, and while you might get hurt or embarrassed sometimes, the alternative is just way worse.
21. Embracing Problems
There's no such thing as a life without problems. Problems don't just disappear, they get exchanged and upgraded for better problems as you grow and evolve. The solution to today's problem will be the seed of tomorrow's.
22. The Painful Process of Growth
Growth is rarely accompanied by joy and celebration. On the contrary, growth is usually painful to some degree. That's because growth requires loss, a loss of your old values, your old behaviors, your old loves, your old identity. Change always has a component of grief to it, so be sure to let yourself grieve.
23. Rejecting a Fixed Identity
Be careful how you define yourself. Your identity is a self-constructed mental prison, confining you to a life of desperately seeking and finding things to validate whatever you've chosen to become. Define yourself as loosely and ambiguously as possible. You'll feel less defensive towards the world and be willing to change when it's necessary.
24. Avoiding Assumptions
Don't make assumptions about people, you have no fucking idea what they've been through. Don't make assumptions about yourself either. The last person we're objective about is ourselves.
25. The Spotlight Effect
No one thinks about you as much as you think about yourself. Whatever you are insecure about, chances are 99% of people around you haven't even noticed it. This is because everybody else is too busy thinking about themselves. This may strike you as a little bit depressing, but it's actually liberating. It means that you are judged far less than you think.
26. Building Confidence
Confidence does not come from an expectation of success, it comes from a comfort with failure. There's a word for someone who feels a need to succeed at everything, a fucking narcissist.
27. Embracing Dislikability
Develop a willingness to be disliked. It will grant you the freedom to do what needs to be done, even if it's unpopular.
28. Impact and Criticism
You cannot be a life-changing presence to some people without also being a complete fucking joke to others. Part of the price of having impact is some hate, and usually that hate is proportional to the impact.
29. The Importance of Dental Hygiene
Floss and wear sunscreen every day. Trust me, in 20 years, you're gonna be thanking me.
30. Extraordinary Results
Extraordinary results come from repeating ordinary actions over an unordinary amount of time. Any overnight success is secretly the result of quietly working in obscurity for years, if not decades.
31. Choosing a Life Partner
Choosing a partner is not about romance. You're also choosing a confidant, a counselor, a career advisor, a therapist, an investor, a teacher, a travel buddy, a roommate, a best friend, a business partner. Your partner is gonna become all of these things. So choose fucking wisely.
32. Love and Relationships
Don't overestimate romantic love. Love doesn't fix relationship problems, it doesn't make trust issues go away. Love can harm as much as it heals. It's an amplifier. It makes a good relationship better and a bad relationship much worse. For a healthy relationship, by itself, love is not enough.
33. Trust as the Currency
Trust is the currency of all relationships. Every good relationship is built off the back of years of trust. Every failed relationship fails because of broken trust. Therefore, honesty and integrity are the backbones of a life of healthy relationships, and therefore, happiness. Dishonesty and a lack of integrity might be a shortcut to some short-term gains, but you're completely fucking yourself in the long run, so fucking stop it.
34. Self-Reflection
If all of your relationships have the same problem, then newsflash, you're the fucking problem.
35. Emotions and Responses
There's no such thing as a bad emotion, only a bad response to an emotion. Every emotion can be used constructively or destructively. Figure out how to channel your negative emotions constructively.
36. The Power of Mornings
I always promised myself I would never be that guy who went to bed at 9:00 PM on a Friday, and I would never be that guy who got up at 5:00 AM to hit the fucking gym and get after it. But kids, I hate to tell you, mornings are the real shit.
37. Not Needing to Prove Anything
You don't have to prove anything to anyone, including yourself. Let me say that again for the people in the back, you don't have to prove anything to anyone, including yourself.
38. Discarding Unhelpful Advice
Life advice is like clothing, try it on, and if it doesn't fit, discard it, try something else. Bad advice will be useless within a few weeks, but good advice will last you a lifetime.
39. Embracing Difficulty
Nothing meaningful in life is easy, and nothing easy in life is meaningful. Stop avoiding the difficult things in your life and instead find the difficult things you enjoy.
40. It's Never Too Late to Change
It's never too late to change. A friend of mine once told me a story about his grandmother. She took her first piano lesson at 62 and practiced every day for over 30 years. By the time she was in her '90s, she had mastered all of the classics. It's never too late to learn something new and pursue your passions.
