101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

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IN YOUR 20s
01. You’re meant to be extraordinary.
Extraordinary people are just that—rare. Recognizing this
doesn’t mean you’re giving up on your potential, it means
you’re dissolving the illusions you have about what it means
to be your whole self and live your best life. We tout the “one
in a billion” success story as though it’s the natural end goal
of working hard and actualizing yourself. It’s not. The real
question is what work are you willing to do even if nobody
claps? What will be worthwhile if it goes unacknowledged?
How will you feel loved by a few people if you aren’t
recognized by many? Finding the exceptional in the ordinary
is the real extraordinary.
02. You’re at the beginning of your life.
Some of you reading this will not make it through your 20s.
Others won’t make it past midlife, or even past this year.
Keep a skull on your desk if you must—nobody assumes
they’ll die young, but that doesn’t mean they don’t.
03. Your faults are more forgivable, and your attributes are more
exceptional.
Believing that you’re less responsible for your misgivings and
that you’re more exceptionally skilled at your strengths is the
mindset to which many people default, but it ultimately just
keeps you small. If you don’t acknowledge the magnitude of
the poor choices you’ve made, you’re bound to justify doing
them again; if you live and act as though you can slide by
because you’re ever so slightly better than everyone else,
you’ll never actually try.

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04. You can literally be whatever you want.
If you don’t have the IQ of a rocket scientist, you cannot be a
rocket scientist. If you don’t have the coordination to be a
professional dancer, you won’t be a professional dancer.
Wanting something badly enough doesn’t qualify you to have
it.
You cannot be whatever you want, but if you work hard and
don’t give up and happen to be born to circumstances that
facilitate it, you can maybe do something that crosses your
abilities with your interests. And if you’re really smart, you’ll
figure out how to be grateful for it, even on the difficult days.
05. You can outsmart pain.
You cannot think your way out of pain. You cannot predict it,
or avoid it, or pretend you don’t feel it. Doing so is living a
fraction of the life you were meant to, and it will make you a
fraction of the person you’re supposed to be.
06. Love is something other people give you.
People cannot transmute emotions, which is interesting to
consider when you realize how utterly consumed the human
race is with the concept of getting other people to love us.
This is because when we think other people love us, we give
ourselves permission to feel love. It’s a mind game, one in
which we rely on everyone but ourselves to allow us to feel
what’s already inside us. (If you think love is something that
exists anywhere but within your own mind and heart, you will
never have it.)
07. Feeling something deeply means it’s “meant to be.”
The intensity with which you experience something (or
someone) does not equate to how “destined” it is. Many
people deeply feel they’re called to be famous in their field,
but they do not have the skills or the grit to make it; most
people who get married feel deeply they’re in the right
relationship, but that doesn’t mean it won’t end in divorce
someday.
Breakups are meant to be. Job losses and hurt feelings and
disappointments are, too. How do we know this? Because

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they happen often, they are the most pivotal redirects. Forget
the final picture you want your life to amount to. It will never
exist the way you think it should, and in the meantime, it will
only ensure that you waste what you do have in the moment.
There’s only one final destination here—the only thing you’re
rushing toward is the end of your life.
08. If you work on yourself enough, you won’t struggle anymore.
If you work on yourself enough, you’ll understand what the
struggle is for.
09. You can control what other people think of you.
You can control how you treat people, but you cannot actually
control what they think. The idea that behaving a certain way
will elicit a certain response is a delusion that will keep you
puppeteering through your life. It will distance you from the
person you want to be and the life you want to live. And for
what? People are going to judge, criticize, condemn, love,
admire, envy, and lust based on their own subjective
perceptions regardless.
10. Hard work guarantees success.
If you’re looking for any one particular outcome as the end
goal of your hard work, you’re most likely going to end up
disappointed. The point of hard work is to recognize the
person it makes you, not what it "gets" you (the former you
can control; the latter, you can’t).
11. Your thoughts will change themselves when your
circumstances change.
Most people assume that when their lives change, their
thoughts will change. When they have someone who loves
them, they’ll think they’re worthy of love. When they have
money, they’ll have a different attitude about it. Unfortunately,
the opposite is true—when you adopt a new mindset about
money, you’ll start behaving differently, and then you’ll be in a
different fiscal position, for example. Your mind creates; it is
not created.
12. Other people are responsible for your feelings.

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The only place you have complete control over what’s said to
and around you is in your home. Otherwise, you exist in a
diverse world of many people and opinions of which are likely
to “offend” you at some point or another. If you want to
assume you are the focal point of everyone’s life and ascribe
meaning to every passing comment and idea that doesn’t
soundly resonate with your own belief system, you’re going to
live a very difficult life. Changing how other people think and
treat you is not a matter of how outraged you get, but how
willing you are to explain, teach, and share. Defensiveness
never precedes growth, it stunts it.
13. Emotional intelligence is infallible composure; self-esteem is
believing you are supremely, completely “good”; happiness is
a product of not having problems.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to feel, express, and
interpret your feelings productively; self-esteem is believing
you’re worthy of loving and being loved despite not being
supremely, completely “good” all of the time; happiness is a
product of how you cope with your problems and whether or
not you see them as the opportunities they are.
14. The right person will come at the right time.
You will not be ready when the love of your life comes along.
You also probably won’t be ready when you see the listing for
your dream job, or to buy a house or maybe have a kid or
maybe quit that job and try to write the book you keep
thinking about or get sick or lose a relative or die yourself. If
you wait on the feeling of “readiness,” you’ll be waiting
forever, and worse, you’ll miss the best of what’s in front of
you.
15. You can postpone your happiness or save it up like money in
a bank.
People postpone their happiness to keep themselves safe.
They dig for another problem to have to solve, another
obstacle to overcome, another passageway until they can feel
the happiness they know is in their lives. You cannot save up
your happiness; you can either feel it in the moment, or you

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miss it. It’s that simple. It’s temporary regardless. The only
variable is whether or not you ever felt it in the first place.
16. Anxiety and negative thinking are pesky irritants you just have
to learn to thwart.
Anxiety is one of the main driving forces that has kept you—
as well as our entire species—alive. Struggling with a
crippling overabundance of it usually means you’re not
listening to it, or there’s some major issue in your life you
refuse to address or take action on. The power of negative
thinking is that it shows us what matters and how we need to
respond to our lives.
17. Focusing solely on your own needs will make you happiest.
Despite what many corners of the Internet would have you believe,
self-sufficiency is just a precursor to happiness. It is the foundation. It
is crucial, but it is not the connectedness on which human beings
thrive. Committing, sacrificing, trying and trying again for the people
you love and the things you believe in are what make a life feel
worthwhile. Meeting your own needs is the first step, not the ultimate
goal.

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