How to Live

e a scholar of pain.
Every pain has a lesson inside, and a reason why it hurts.
Analyze it.
Understand it.

Ghosts don’t leave until you’ve understood their message.
Problems persist until you claim them and solve them.
Face them directly and they’ll disappear.

Comfort is a silent killer.
Comfort is quicksand.
The softer the chair, the harder it is to get out of it.

The right thing to do is never comfortable.
How you face pain determines who you are.

Everything good comes from some kind of pain.
Muscle fatigue makes you healthy and strong.
The pain of practice leads to mastery.
Difficult conversations save your relationships.

But if you avoid pain, you avoid improvement.
Avoid embarrassment, and you avoid success.
Avoid risk, and you avoid reward.

The most rewarding things in life take years.
Only bad things happen quickly.

Decisions are easy when you have only one priority.

Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it.
You can only earn it through hard work.
Mastery is the ultimate status.

Without memories, you have no sense of self.
You have to remember your past to see your trajectory.
You use your past to make your future.

Making memories is the most important thing you can do with your life.
The more memories you create, the longer and richer your life feels.
Making memories is how to live.

How you feel about anything is based on how you look back at it.
Your memory is influenced by how you feel now.
In a bad mood, you might see only the dark side of events that are actually neutral.
In a good mood, you might see the bright side of trauma.

The more something means to you, the more you’ll remember it.
Give moments meaning to remember them.
Take away meaning to forget.

You remember what’s important.

Make a story for the things you want to remember.
Never make a story for the things you want to forget.
Let those disappear with time.

Your memories are a mix of fact and fiction.
Your story about an experience overwrites your memory of the actual experience.
So use this in your favor.
Re-write your past.

Traveling makes you better at communicating, since you can’t assume familiarity, and must speak simply and clearly.
You’ll get used to speaking with people of different religions, worldviews, and communication styles.
You’ll know when to be formal, when to joke, when to reference tradition, and when to swear.

Short-term thinking is the root of most of our problems, from pollution to debt, both personal and global.
Easter Island used to be filled with trees, but early settlers cut them down, and they never grew back.
Greenland used to have grass, but early settlers let their sheep graze, and it never grew back.
A few short-term decisions can lead to centuries of destruction.

We treat the future like a garbage dump.
We dump our debts, pollution, junk, and responsibilities on the future, as if it’s a problem solved.