The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke once said:
“Death is being alive and not knowing it.”
I guess until 2012, I was dead. It’s not like I wasn’t living. I was trying my best and, most of the time, I was happy. But I didn’t realize it and so I was unable to appreciate the vastness of this incredible experience called life.
I didn’t know who I was. How much I could change. That I could shape life as much as it could shape me. So when I read something that hinted at these things for the first time, I began a lifelong journey: the quest to know myself.
Seneca said it takes a lifetime to learn how to live, just like it takes a lifetime to learn how to die. But with each new piece of the ever-changing puzzle you find, you get a little closer to your true self. To being alive and knowing it.
More importantly, you’ll develop the confidence to express that self. To not be trapped by dogma and societal doctrine. I’ve only just begun, and there’s infinitely more to discover, but here’s everything I know to be true right now.
- The most important part of figuring out how to live is asking the question.
- “I don’t know” is not an admission of defeat, it’s the start of empowerment.
- Most of the solutions to life’s challenges lie in sitting with yourself.
- The only person you’ll spend the rest of your life with is you.
- Imagination is our most powerful ability. It is also the most dangerous.
- If you run out of kind words for yourself, stop talking.
- Empathy is learning to look in the mirror and not hate what you see.
- The truth about ourselves is what we choose to believe.
- Freedom is always internal. Whether ‘to’ or ‘from,’ it starts in the mind.
- Having a choice matters more than whatever choice you make.
- Love is not a noun, it’s a verb. And it starts with loving yourself.
- We should believe more in what we create, less in what we emulate.
- We can’t choose what we’re raised to value, but we can choose to change.
- What we learn alone is what we carry into our interactions with others.
- All relationships in life have mutual effects. Everything is connected.
- Comparison is not just the death of joy, it is also the birth of misery.
- It’s better to be curious than judgmental and impossible to be both at once.
- Study the failures of those around you, not the wins of those far away.
- Our fixed point of view is an individual limit, but a collective strength.
- Changing your perspective is hard, but let it always be your first try.
- How much we learn is limited by how open-minded we are, not time.
- Aging won’t free you from stupidity. Only learning will.
- A mistake is only as valuable as the time you spend thinking about it.
- Minimalism is not about physical space, it’s about making room to think.
- Every lesson in life comes at the expense of unlearning another.
- Seeing clearly is holding different truths in your head at the same time.
- The more you listen, the smarter you get. Listening leads to learning.
- The smarter you get, the more you listen. Learning leads to humility.
- The best tools always put you in control, even when you’re not using them.
- Books are infinite. If you treat them right, they’ll keep on giving forever.
- We can’t delegate our responsible use of technology to technology itself.
- When we make technology our ideology, we let our tools form our identity.
- You don’t need an identity to have a life.
- The only way to stay true to who you are is to change every day.
- There is no right set of habits. Just the ability to adapt at the right time.
- Know how to build and break habits and you’ll always flow with change.
- Reality consists of subjects and verbs. We supply all the adjectives.
- The only place where we can truly live is the present. It all happens here.
- Peace of mind relies on having faith in present-you.
- Often, the easiest way is the hard way. More effort, but less competition.
- Few things that are risky are actually dangerous.
- Social acceptance is a bad metric for making choices and tracking success.
- When the outside world is loud, be quiet inside.
- Your work should reflect who you are, not what you want your life to be.
- Detachment bears authenticity, expectations cloud your thinking.
- The easiest way to attract what you desire is to deserve what you want.
- Wanting what makes you happy requires wanting the right things.
- Half of happiness is learning to love everything you don’t have.
- If you travel because you’re unhappy, you’ll never reach your destination.
- Happiness is a spontaneous byproduct, not a permanent state.
- Death will be an interruption.
- Your legacy will be determined by the perception of others. Not you.
- Everything that’s part of the grand circle is destined to die. Including us.
- What you do in your one life will be everything you ever do.
- If we act accordingly, life is long enough for most of us.