25 lessons to live by at age 25 (part 1/2)
I started writing this post the day I turned 25. That was four months ago, on March 5th to be exact (in case you want to mark your calendar for next year). I underestimated how long it would take me to write about these 25 life lessons and how much I would have to say about each one. So I decided to split this newsletter into two parts. Here are the first thirteen of my “25 lessons to live by at age 25.” Hope you like them!
I’m 25 years old! Happy birthday to me!
There’s nothing like turning a quarter of a century old (wtf) to make you take a deeper look at your life and be introspective.
Before we begin, a few notes.
These are lessons I try to live by, not lessons I do live by—or at least not every day. I’m not saying I’m a perfect person who follows their ideals to the tee. Because I’m not. These are just some rules that guide my life, generally speaking.
Why am I writing this list? There are three main reasons:
To give you an interesting look into how I think about my life.
To remind myself of the ways I want to live my life.
To create a snapshot of my mental state at 25.
Not all of these lessons are super deep. Some might be pretty obvious. I came up with some of them in cool ways, like reading a great novel or “listening to my elders,” but I also got some from TikTok. All that to say that it’s not that deep, so let’s jump in.
1) Sleep is not a waste of time.
I’ve always had a weird relationship with sleep. I hated that there were eight hours each day that I couldn’t spend doing what I wanted. Why oh why was I given a body so rudimentary that it requires such long bouts of downtime?!? From a very early age, I prided myself on being a morning person, wanting to wake up early to maximize the number of hours I had in the day. When that wasn’t enough, I experimented with polyphasic sleep.
Of course, the more I fought sleep, the harder it fought back. I couldn’t concentrate as well and just felt groggy. Back in my freshman year of college, on my third day of trying triphasic sleep—1.5 hours of sleep every six hours—I could no longer focus my eyes on my econ professor’s PowerPoint slides, and my vision started to blur and distort.
Now I know that fighting sleep is not a battle I can win. After reading Mathew Walker’s acclaimed book “Why We Sleep,” I finally changed my mind. Sleep isn’t keeping me from the things I want to be doing. It’s fueling me so that I can do them at my best. It’s what allows you to live a long, healthy, happy life.
It took me longer than it should have to come to this new conclusion. But now, I sleep as much as I need and make time for it. I would even say that I prioritize it. And I feel great because of it.
2) Setting healthy habits is as easy as following a simple formula.
Gone are the days when I hoped I would read more or use my phone less with no idea how to actually achieve either. Habits aren’t built randomly. They have a clear blueprint, and knowing how to utilize it allows you to control your impulses to form healthy habits.
The formula is this:
Trigger.
Craving.
Routine.
Reward.
The trigger is what sets off the habit. (e.g., Your phone dings.)
The craving subconsciously gets you thinking about the last time the trigger happened and a reward ensued. (e.g., You wonder what caused your phone to ding. Could it be a text from my crush? A new video from my favorite SMI (social media influencer)? Is someone attacking my clan on Clash of Clans?)
The routine is the habit itself, the thing you do without thought because your brain has been programmed to expect a reward if it follows the routine. (e.g., You drop everything you are currently doing and pick up your phone.)
Finally, you get your reward. (e.g., “Oh yay, it’s time to BeReal!”)
If you break it down, all habits have these four parts. Negative habits are established quickly due to a disproportionate reward for a simple trigger. That’s why TikTok is so addictive because opening the app is dead simple but can provide hours of mindless fun.
Breaking a negative habit can be as easy as disrupting the usual flow of these four steps. You could turn off your notifications for apps that take up too much of your time or put your phone in the other room while you need to focus on something. If the trigger is gone, the habit will be gone as well. (If that doesn’t work, maybe the trigger wasn’t what you initially thought.)
When it comes to healthy habits, which are usually tougher to implement, the key is to find a trigger and a reward associated with the habit so that it can create the craving.
(If I write this much for every lesson, we’ll be here all day, so I’ll keep the next three short, I promise.)
3) Don’t be tougher on yourself than you are with others.
Extend yourself the same kindness you extend to others. Forgive yourself for things for which you would easily forgive your peers.
Hold yourself to a high standard, but if you mess up, be charitable with yourself.
4) Everyone should read. A lot.
Pretty self-explanatory.
Creating a reading habit over the past two years has been transformational for me. Reading opens you up to new ideas, changes your mind, teaches you how to live, and makes you dream of bigger and better things for yourself.
Do more of it.
5) You will never regret spending more time with people you love.
Spending time with friends and family instead of “being productive” can sometimes feel like procrastination. It shouldn’t.
Remember: you won’t regret spending time with the people you love, but you could regret not spending enough time with them.
6) Adult friendships take work.
People get busy, and schedules don’t always align. This was the most significant shift I noticed after graduating college. I had spent my whole life in school, where all my friends I lived with, had classes with, or at the very least could see regularly because we were on the same campus every day. Outside of the occasional work bestie, you will only see your friends if you make time to see each other.
As an adult, you need to invest time into relationships and can’t wait for others to come to you.
7) Don’t waste your time on the wrong people.
This is the flip side of the previous rule.
Time is a limited resource. Because friendships take effort, don’t waste time on people who don’t reciprocate or aren’t worth the trouble. It’ll be obvious when that is the case, so don’t let them take up your time.
8) Don’t learn things for the sake of learning them, have a goal and learn how to achieve it.
Learning is hard. It takes a conscious effort to seek out knowledge, record it in your brain, and assimilate it enough to use it in your everyday life. What makes it easier is having a clear motivation for learning whatever it is you’re learning.
When I first learned how to code, I didn’t think, “It would be cool to know how to code, I’d like to learn how to do that.” Instead, I thought, “I want to build a website, how can I make that happen?” I had a clear intention in mind, which guided my learning.
This makes the learning process way more manageable, not only because it gives you clear motivation but also because you apply all that you learn the instant you learn it. The first step in building my website was learning HTML, and as soon as I learned how to build a link, I immediately added it to my code. What better way to assimilate new knowledge?
So that’s what I mean by this lesson. Figure out what you want to do, then figure out how to do it. That’s the best way you’ll learn.
9) Choose the less-comfortable option. “Seek discomfort.”
I’ve ripped this straight from Yes Theory, but it’s a great way to live your life. Comfort comes from repetition, doing things you know over and over again. To grow, you have to venture out of that sphere of comfort.
Training for my triathlon was just that. I repeatedly and continuously pushed myself to new heights, never settling on a new fitness level, always trying to transcend. The newsletters I enjoy writing the most are those where I dig deep, go to places I never knew I would go to on a public stage, and lay it all out. There is no comfort in doing that, but it is so rewarding.
(An extension of this lesson is to start each day with the task which brings you the most stress. Postponing it will only prolong the anxiety, whereas doing it first will make the rest of your tasks feel easy. Use discomfort as a compass to organize your tasks.)
10) A little every day goes a long way.
It rhymes, so it must be true!
Keeping a clean and tidy home isn’t that hard as long as you do a little every day. A marathon with no training is a gargantuan feat, but running a little daily and increasing your distance in small increments make it very achievable. Thirty minutes of reading a day in 2022 resulted in me reading 36 books. I could go on.
Break down big goals into daily tasks, and you can achieve almost anything.
11) Being sober is cool.
Over the five months of training for my triathlon, I drank only once, on my birthday. I believe this was the longest period I’ve gone without alcohol since I started drinking.
I thought I would miss it. I thought it would be hard.
The truth is, I’d never felt better. I slept soundly every night (unless my dog woke me up). No hangovers to use as excuses for procrastination. I could get the most out of every day and have a clear mind to appreciate it.
Sure, sometimes I missed drinking with friends. But I’ve found I can still go out with them and have a good time. I don’t need alcohol to dance or have a chat, and it’s nice that a night out doesn’t automatically mean I might feel like crap the next day.
Should I never drink again? No. A drink now and then to celebrate or let loose is a normal part of life, not something I want or need to cut out completely.
But I’ll aim to be sober most of the time.
12) Take care of your body, and it will return the favor.
Everyone knows you should take care of your body, but I had never made it a priority. Now that I have, I’m reaping the benefits.
I’ve only recently started taking care of my skin. My girlfriend devised morning and night routines for me that comprise a cleanser, serums, retinol (once a week), moisturizer, and SPF. Crazy enough, my skin looks clearer than it ever has. I’m radiant, if I do say so myself.
I’ve been working out consistently, training for my triathlon and now for my upcoming marathon. I feel stronger, faster, and healthier than ever.
The same goes for my healthier sleep habits and lower alcohol consumption. I feel brighter and clearer when I wake up and can make the most of every day.
It took me 25 years to start taking care of my body. That’s how long it took me to realize that all the time and effort you put into your body directly improves your mental health and overall happiness. Invest in your body, not because you should, but because you can.
13) You don’t have to be a professional athlete to train like one.
As you know, I’m currently training for the NYC Marathon. (Follow me on strava to keep up with my runs!)
But look, I’m not very fast. According to my Apple Watch, my VO2 max is just below average. That means that about half the world can consume more oxygen from the air than me, in theory making them better runners. I’m no world-class athlete.
But that doesn’t stop me from training like one.
When I first started running a few years back, I would go all out at the beginning of the run, then struggle to keep up the pace. I immediately got shin splints and could hardly keep going more than a mile. I thought that I just needed to push through the pain. Eventually, I realized something was wrong and that maybe running wasn’t for me. Looking back, I was training all wrong.
What would a pro athlete do differently?
Well, first off, they use science to train more efficiently. I didn’t need a lab at home to realize I was pushing my body too hard. Some simple research would have given me ways to measure my VO2 max/heart rate zones so I could know specifics about my fitness and plan runs accordingly. Athletes use data on their own bodies and modern methods backed by science to ensure that their training is working, effective, and not in excess.
Pro athletes also have coaches. They know their limitations, and their coach is there to devise the best training plan and push them to new heights. Now I don’t have a coach or a personal trainer, but I use training plans built by sports scientists to guide my training the same way a coach would. They know better than me, so I use them to improve my training.
Finally, pro athletes design their lives around their training. After all, that’s their job. I’ve found success in treating my training the same way top athletes do, prioritizing it above all else. When I know I have training planned for the day, I try to finish it first (following lesson 9). This doesn't always work out if a work call or something else gets in the way, but I prioritize training whenever possible.
So yeah, train like a pro athlete! It doesn't mean you must match their skill, strength, speed or training volume. Just train consistently and intelligently, use outside help, and prioritize your training.
That’s it for this time.
I’ll send out the remaining lessons in an upcoming newsletter, so please follow to receive that one in your inbox:
Let me know what you think of these lessons (in the comments or by dm’ing me)! Do you agree with them? Which ones speak to you the most? Or do you think differently, and if so, where do we disagree?
This was a fun exercise for me, and I hope it’s a fun insight into how I see things.
Thanks for reading. I’ll see you in the next one ❤️
(Shoutout to Andrei, the super-fan of the week!)
Agree with them all!
So funny that we had a lot of similar points. I guess it shows what really matters in life in a way.