A continuation of my winter tradition from 2022.
Big sentences are learnings I don’t want to forget. They are the off-the-cuff thoughts I have when meditating on the big things I learned over the past year.
Lifestyle
- Grab life by the f*cking balls while also letting it take you down a beautifully, authentic path. Go for self-assured, confident, authentic, thought-out, caring, fun, & present the vast majority of the time.
- Good routines & habits are goated. They solve so many problems that would otherwise pop up. Consistent execution is the hard part.
- Less stimulation → better internal state & clarity of mind.
- I felt a lot of moments of pure joy, infinite love, feeling 2” above the ground, ever-expanding gratitude, etc. I felt that a lot. In the big moments on top of a mountain. In the small moments on a walk to the coffee shop while looking at some tree bark. It was beautiful. Life is beautiful. I am just on the tip of the iceberg of exploring the depths of the human experience. It’s going to make for quite a ride (regardless of how my life looks on the outside). That said, I am excited to continue to share (and get better at sharing) my internal state with the outside world. Creating art and expressing yourself is so cool & so authentically human. To be able to capture a moment or inspire a feeling, is so fucking cool.
- Meditation or thought observation during random moments in the day is lovely.
- The present moment is the only thing.
- Embrace the little things in life, smell the roses, and truly live every day. Live every day as if you’ve deliberately come back to this day to enjoy it. As if it is the final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life (About Time & This Is Water).
- The stoic principles are prettttty, prettty good. Living with purpose & meaning, thinking about what you really want to do in life, enjoying leisure time and not always being busy, living with a sense of urgency because you will inevitably die, growing in wisdom and experience, and embracing the ever-passing of time (rather than let life go by). Not bad
- Hard conversations, easy life. Easy conversations, hard life.
- Putting off the tasks I said I was going to do for bullshit reasons is my main source of stress / anxiety.
- The less busy I am, the less productive I am. A certain level of consistent momentum can mean all the difference for productivity. Discipline → mental freedom.
- Been simplifying my daily plans with 5 things: 3 flow states (including first big thing), meditate, and physical activity. It’s honestly pretty good. Keeps me from being a slave to the task list.
- I’d like to do a 3-day digital detox every quarter.
- I feel completely free & authentic when hanging out with global friends in hostels. (
- I want to live in multiple cities. Seasonal living type beat. Slowmad vibes.
- Make a very intentional effort to live with people who will push me to grow. Spend more time than you’d think. Getting this right is asymmetrically important.
- Hanging out and working remote for a week or so at a lake house with the fellas is a sweet way to spend your 20s. Vancouver would be especially sweet for this.
- NYC is actually a really fun city to live in.
- Nothing better than teaching people a few steps below you.
- Got back into running, I really enjoy it’s combo with lifting. That said, I enjoy shorter track workouts or mile runs than longer ones.
- Infinite hobbies: bouldering, pencil drawing, unstimulated walks, stretching, and latin dance
- I f*cking love doing one adventure a day.
- Carry yourself with some swag. Be the one who can talk to people and dance well. Who isn’t afraid to look you in the face and smile when he meets you. Who can playfully chat one second and talk about real stuff the next.
Connection / Relationships
- I'd like my reputation to be ‘talk to that guy and you'll leave energized, thinking about something new. Good things will happen (via resources, connections, etc), and it'll generally cost you nothing.’
- I plan to be consistently connecting with people and bringing them together throughout my life. It just works so well.
- People are way more accessible to you than you think.
- Novel experiences + intimate hangouts to introduce new friends together.
- Everyone values & recognizes the importance of community. More reason than ever to keep hone in on my skillset.
- I am obsessed with learning how to ask the right questions.
- I’m using my pick axe and going to town on the gold mine that is UIUC’s student body. So many awesome, fascinating people within 1 mile of my house.
- The Silicon Valley trip convinced me that the tech/startup serendipity of SF is too good to pass up on. I think it is #1 on my list for cities to live in post graduation.
- I love people that build stuff and occasionally write when they have good ideas.
- Be the person with “a guy” for everything.
Professional / Skill Building
- Find the people you love, and then do life with them.
- I gravitate towards being a serial entrepreneur while intertwining community building, connecting people, & learning in public. I also want to work on these projects with people I love and trust who are also A-level killers.
- Love studying storytelling + showmanship.
- Even if you are growing, the important things need to stay unscalable (ex: doing 1on1s with all high potential new members at Illini Blockchain yielded a ton of positive results).
- It’s important to consistently break your frame for what is possible. You unconsciously set limits for what is possible and meeting other ambitious people shows you that you can do so much more than you think.
- Hiring great people solves a lot of bullshit problems.
- Doubling down on your strength >> patching up your weaknesses
- The momentum you build when obsessively focusing on 1 (maybe 2) things is unparalleled. So many good ideas flow via your subconscious.
- I want to become a sales killer. Also an A-Level connector of people
- Corporate junkie life ain’t it, for me.
- The best salesman is the one who believes in their product the most. That’s why Oppenheimer was able to pull everything together despite being a damn theoretical physicist.
- Habits really do comopund. Most of the things people compliment me on (authentic energy, comfort with talking and connect, dancing, confidence, general self-awareness) were non existent or very low functioning just a few years ago.
Learning
- I love studying the fundamentals
- I love reading multiple books at a time and allowing my curiosity to roam wherever.
- Exploring via personal websites is so fun. Sort of like a mini-biography. And it usually links to a ton of high-signal resources.
- Love books where each page or chapter can be read on its own.
- Wisdom is understanding the long-term impact of your current decision-making.
- I want to learn the fundamentals so I can come to my own version of the truth.
- Don’t be institutionalized. Stay curious, stay hungry. Don’t let people push you around. Stand for what is right. Stand for something.
Internal State
- I am becoming a more loving, outwardly appreciative person. But, I still have lots of room to improve.
- Giving yourself time & space to process emotions (negative or positive) is huge for quality of life. What you resist, persists. Instead, accept the emotion and let it wash over you. But, don’t let it keep you rattled for too long.
- When you move, you need to be prepared to rebuild your environment & its cues so that you can maintain the same habits.
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