My loose rules for a life well lived:
Be kind. Life is hard enough and everyone suffers internally. Don’t add to the burden they carry.
Be curious. The world is as big as your mind can make it. There’s an infinite amount of interesting things to explore. Ask questions and spend time with new ideas.
Read books. Writing is how we transport ideas through space and time. The best ideas are held in books, each a treasure chest you can open as easily as the cover. Over centuries, the most beautiful stories ever told have been carefully saved for us here.
Stay close to human things. Things we evolved with. Cooking, hand crafts, nature, relationships, physicality, sleep, and community. You are built for a world of tactility.
Remind yourself the internet is a game that is detached from the above. When you strip information from presence and experience and combine it with attention algorithms and sprinkle in non-human bots incentivized to sow division, you’re creating an asylum for yourself. Don’t get lost in the sauce, call your friends and family and spend time together offline.
Help others. Everyone you help is likely to help you. If you reach a hand out to help 100 people in a year, on the day you need it, 100 hands will lift you.
Your real friends will support you and your efforts. They will not discourage you, roll their eyes, or doubt your abilities or your reasons for trying.
Someone who tries to make you doubt yourself at every turn is not your friend, they are an acquaintance who has placed themselves in opposition to your success because it makes them feel better about themselves.
Spend your valuable time with people who do not do this to you.
Comparison will steal your joy. Only compare yourself to who you want to be, and who you were yesterday. Happiness in life is only relative to your own experience. Root yourself in your own metrics and detach them from your imagination about how others are doing and feeling.
Make records. Write, photograph, make videos, whatever you want. You are in a state of constant change in a world that constantly changes around you. Memory is malleable and fleeting. Do what you can to preserve some of your experience. Your future self will thank you.
Check in with yourself, gently, and reorient yourself towards your own North Star. It is ok and good to wander and stray but make sure to nudge yourself back on path when you need to.
