28 Things I have learned in 28 years
I have just turned 28, and to some this might not mean much but to me every birthday gives me a chance to assess myself, asses my own personal growth and awareness. I feel like throughout the past 5 years I have been growing exponentially into the man I someday wish to become and although I am still far from being him, I can see myself a little bit closer with each time the earth cycles the sun.
For this 28th birthday I decided to do a list of 28 valuable lessons I’ve learned in these years, a list I plan to reference back to each new year from now on. And today I want to share it with you:
Just because nobody is looking doesn’t mean the universe isn’t looking. The universe sees and values every drop of sweat, every hard moment you experience and all the sacrifices you do, even if you don’t think your hard work will ever pay of, it will.
There’s no breakthrough moment but bricks in a wall, every little successful moment in your career is just a brick you lay in a wall that eventually represents your success. From the outside it seems like some people suddenly jump to success due to a single action or lucky instant but really there is a bunch of little successes that laid the road for that “breakthrough moment” everyone sees.
People will judge you regardless of what you do so you might as well be judged for being who you want to be and living the life that you wish to live.
Creativity is a muscle that gets stronger and more sensible as you use it. Great artists like Picasso built the habit of creating art regardless of feeling inspired or not, this way your tools will sharp to take advantage of when inspiration comes.
You won’t achieve amazing goals unless you truly believe you deserve to achieve them in the first place. By allowing yourself to be worthy of your dream achievements, you allow these doors to exist, then you focus on how these can be opened.
The beauty of the world is relative to your viewpoint. If you choose to seek flaws in every person and situation in your surroundings, you will produce a flawed world but if you chose to see beauty where you didn’t before then your world will each day be more beautiful. We have the power to live in a more beautiful world so choosing no to is one of lifes biggest mistakes.
Don’t settle for less of what you really want. If for some reason you don’t believe you deserve said things, then work in improving yourself to be worthy of them rather than accepting the fact of not having them. This way even if you fail to have them, you will at least be better than before.
Doing what you love everyday is worth more than any salary. The world is filled with stories of people making millions of dollars but feeling miserable about themselves. Focus on doing what you love and chances are you will do it so well that success and wealth will come as a biproduct.
People are borrowed, they’re not for us to keep so enjoy each moment like you’ll never have it again because you won’t. Focus on the miracle that is to spend time with those you love and realize that they wont always be there, that’s a fact of life so cherish each of those moments and be aware of their beauty.
Once you love someone deeply, you won’t ever stop loving them. You can choose to transform this love into hate, ignore it or turn it into a new and beautiful thing. Loving someone is something incredible and its sad to think many people go through their lives without ever experiencing deep love so if you’re lucky enough to love this way, don’t let it go to waste and nurture it into something that will grow forever.
The flaws you’re the most self-aware of will end up being your most beautiful traits. Sometimes is that thing that people use to hide about themselves in fear of being made fun of that ends up being the very same thing that makes them successful. Think of that beautiful corckyness that makes some people so beautiful and naturally attractive.
People you can be vulnerable and intimate with are the best definition of true wealth. As humans we have the necessity of expressing our true self, so having people around that we can be out true self with are an invaluable commodity to have.
You will slowly build your own definition of manhood and manliness. This is applicable for woman as well, society tends to set guidelines of what being a man or a woman should be but in order to be happy we must create our own version of it, one that makes us feel naturally men or woman, or whatever gender definition best describes you.
Don’t try to be cool, cool changes all the time. Be you and some will find that cool. Trying to be “cool” can be really exhausting as the definition of cool changes constantly. Really “cool” people throughout history have just been people that have been true to themselves and that brings up a natural beauty that is extremely attractive to most.
God is real and it does care for human affairs. Most of my life I defined myself as an Agnostic, meaning I used to believe god existed like a force of nature, but was to powerful to care about us, it had more important things to care for. Lately I’ve allowed myself to believe there is a true communication with the universe and I’ve experienced many strange “coincidences” that I like to believe are the act of god. You can choose to ignore its presence, or you can choose to tap into this energy, the choice is yours.
It does not matter if you’re an introvert or an extrovert, there is no excuse for not being confident in yourself. You cannot convince the world youre amazing if you do not believe it first. Confidence is a key trait of highly successful people and anyone that wants to be highly successful as well should work on being extremely confident more than working on anything else.
Its never to late to do that thing that you wish to do, yes not even now and not even for that specific thing. You will always thing its too late, that you missed the boat but will also always wished you had started said thing then. Start it now, don’t wait for the next boat or for the perfect weather, It will never come.
Happiness is a skill, not a destination. Stop trying to reach the mythical place of happiness and start learning how to be happy, regardless of your possessions or conditions. Just like any other skill, it will improve as you work on it and over time, you’ll be happier with less effort.
Abundance is all around you if you choose to see it. Chances are that if you’re reading this right now, you’re extremely abundant. And it may seem like compared to others you have so little, but your life is surrounded with abundance, you just need to train yourself to see it.
Youll start loving your scars as they remind you of your humanity. A weird thing about life is that although painful moments are that, painful, thay also remind us of our resilience, strength and by contrast of our happiest moments. Sometimes I find myself mentally going back to painful situations just to remind myself of how lucky I am to be living in this moment, both through tick and thin.
Hard work beats talent, if talent is lazy, its just wasted talent but hard work will always be great hard work. But when talent works hard, there’s no limit to where it can go, think Lebron James, Taylor Swift or Elon Musk.
Learn to trust the process. The problem with growing any skill is that there a point in the learning curve where your expectations will not be met by your level of expertise and is easy to be discouraged by this but trusting that you will reach that point you wish to as you keep putting hours to your skill development is key to eventually reach mastery.
If it wont matter in 6 months, It doesn’t deserve more than 6 minutes of stress. Let things flow and be as life makes them as its not worth stressing for things you cant control.
Your habits increase over time both good and bad. Peter Voogd says it something as your habits will be 10 times stronger 10 years from now, good and bad so you need to focus on working on the good ones and reducing the bad ones as they’ll all increase with time.
Your awareness also increases over time, like a skill or a muscle. As you allow to be more aware, more sensible to it, your awareness will increase exponentially.
The purpose of life is using your privilege to help others be happy and achieve their goals, never loose sight of this. Is a fact of life that were given abundance for our own good as much as for the help of others like an ultimate test of character by the universe. Don’t fall for the trap of thinking your privilege is only yours to enjoy, you have some work to do.
If you are planning of giving up, wait just a little longer. Is a recurring detail on every success story that incredible success often comes right after the moment when the protagonist of the story planned on giving up. Is often said that you will go through “hell” before you reach “heaven”.
The best is always yet to come. We come to this world to experience life itself so don’t think that the best of life in in the past, the beauty of life is life itself and all the experiences that come with it. As time goes by, you just experience more of it.