24 Lessons From My 24th Year Around the Sun
ALSO: I'm writing an ebook!
It’s my birthday tomorrow. I’ll be 24.
Just a short post for this week, and I’ll get right to it. These are 24 of the most profound lessons that I’ve learned in the past year. I hope you find them useful, thought-provoking, or maybe even a little bit funny. 😊
1. It’s not what you know nor who you know. It’s how you share what you know.
2. The most important part of your life is still just part of your life. Nothing is everything.
3. The gi is dead. Sorry.
4. You can’t teach heart, but you can learn it.
5. Chase goals, not people. The best relationships are the ones you stumble upon.
6. Love alone isn’t enough to save dying relationships.
7. Obsession precedes success. This is why you feel like a crazy person.
8. Older does not mean wiser. You can definitely be an old idiot.
9. The person you are when you’re trying to succeed shouldn’t necessarily be the person you are when you go home.
10. If you are successful in one thing, self-awareness is the quality that will make you successful in multiple things.
11. The glass isn’t half full nor half empty, it’s just a glass.
12. You can’t chase love, but you can push it away.
13. Bleaching your hair doesn’t give you superpowers, but it still looks pretty freaking cool and is totally worth the weird stares people gave me at first. Having pink hair was even more fun.
14. EBI Overtime is fucking stupid. Won’t apologize for this one.
15. Your productivity is not your identity.
16. The answer isn’t in your phone.
17. People’s actions speak louder than their words. As someone who expresses themselves through words, this is extra important.
18. If your insecurities drive you, you’ll always be insecure.
19. “Working hard in silence” is a terrible way to make money in the digital age. Make some noise and don’t be a prick. People will notice.
20. Don’t be a stoic robot, be a person.
21. Your character is exposed when you are confronted with your limits. To develop character, frequently confront those limits.
22. Focus on connecting above networking. Everyone has colleagues and peers, but few people have true friends. Be a true friend.
23. If you choose a job you love, you’ll still have to work pretty fuckin’ hard to get any good at it.
24. Compartmentalization is the key to sustaining lasting high-level performance.
These are some of my favorite things that I’ve learned over the past 365 days. I’m sure by this time next year I’ll have learned much more and some of these life lessons will seem both useless and problematic.
But I guess that that’s the point. For better and for worse, 23 was a wild ride. I can’t wait to see what 24 brings.
Other Articles Published In the Last 7 Days
This Is What I’d Tell My Younger Self Before I Started Freelancing
Dutch Scammers, $5 Gigs, and Nearly Half a Million Words Later
You Can’t Find Happiness In a Book
Marketing Lessons From Being a Broke Amateur Athlete
ALSO: I’m writing an ebook!
I’ll be sharing about this more soon, but I’m about a quarter of the way into my first ebook. I won’t release the title just yet, but it’s about the learning process of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and how you can optimize your martial arts training for rapid skill development.
The plan is to release it in September, and it will be the first of 2 ebooks I’m writing before the end of the year.
As always, if you enjoyed what you read, please share, tell your friends, or reshare my content from Medium. It helps me more than you know.
Wishing you the best,
—Chris