Recently I turned 28 years old. What a life.

I’m grateful for all the people I have met in my life and I’m grateful for those that stuck around.

In this episode, I’d like to share the 28 lessons I learned in 28 years.

1. If you want something, you’ll find a way to make it work.

Nobody knows you the best other than yourself. Sure, some people might know things about you that you don’t know about but through discovery and experiencing what more life has to offer, you will be able to figure it out soon enough. Sometimes we will find ourselves feeling lazy and sometimes it’s not just because of laziness. Find that one thing that you love to do.

2. Your growth is also influenced by the quality of your closest connections.

Invite people in your life that genuinely make you feel good about yourself. Work on your boundaries, your likes, and dislikes, and soon you will figure out that not everyone has to be connected with you in the long run. If you do find yourself, friends, with the people you like the most, cherish them and appreciate them. If not and you prefer spending time with yourself then continue to work on your closest connection - yourself.

3. You can be your biggest critic but you can also be your biggest cheerleader.

Sometimes we will doubt our ability to do things, this is normal. The future is unknown and what matters is that now we are working on balancing what criticisms help us move forward and which ones to chuck out.

4. Confidence is gained from practice.

Confidence does not come easily. It comes with practice and with practice comes competence. Don’t be afraid to keep trying new things. Finding out what you are passionate about could be an easy or difficult process. Take it easy. Try new things and you’ll figure out which ones you can practice and work on in the long run.

5. Work on your mental concepts and beliefs. And then trust your intuition.

Science will tell us that our intuition is usually wrong. We need mental tools to create the right decisions in our lives. To work on our mental concepts and beliefs, we need to continuously question what we know and how we know it. Books written by experts and old masters can give us a glimpse of different perspectives that might help us make better decisions.

6. One way to work on your mental concepts is to talk to people that don’t share the same concepts.

Being open to other people’s beliefs and listening to them as if they’re your own is one of the things I’ve started practicing after college. It was hard at first but being respectful of other people’s interests and beliefs is a trait that is most needed in today’s world full of fake news and disinformation. Being open to possibilities keeps us from staying in the dark place we call echo chamber.

7. You are not your parents.

As children, people would often say that we are the products of our parents’ aspirations and trauma. One way or another, they have projected and influenced their interests into ours and it came to us whether we would reject or accept these projections and interests. One thing is for sure, you are not your parents. Once you turn legal age, you will have to take responsibility for your actions. You will need to fix things in yourself that you never thought needed fixing. Find the people that support your well-being the most. Get a support group. Whether your parents are close to perfect or not, you are not your parents. Carve your own life.

8. Money is easy to handle if you have the systems in place.

Not just in finances but we can utilize technology to make budgeting and life management easy for us. Add friction to actions you don’t want to reinforce like adding a password or delay to transactions and smoothen the process for actions you want to do more often.

9. Friends come and go.

This is just the way of life. There will come a time that you will outgrow some of your friends. And for those that you keep for life, consider yourself lucky. For those that don’t, consider yourself lucky. For the relationships that you do let go of, it could mean that it needed to be done for you to be able to focus on your growth. Life can be very challenging.

10. Be grateful and be visible about it.

Journaling and listing down what you are grateful for is great. But it seems that there is more benefit to being open and verbalizing it to someone you’re grateful for. Not only does it improves relationships but it also improves your well-being. Try it out.

11. Spend less time on social media.

I deactivated my Facebook account in 2017. I had become a toxic version of myself and I have become anxious about my relationship with my friends. My well-being had improved tremendously since then. Though I occasionally scroll through Twitter or Instagram, I realized that I didn’t stay too long on these sites compared to Facebook. Not seeing my Facebook timeline helped me work on my projects and my relationship with myself. Now I’m so much better.

12. In life there are no shortcuts, but for productivity use them.

Don’t be afraid to use keyboard shortcuts, or macros, in improving your workflow. The future is tech and AI, study them and your life will be freer.

13. Focus on what you can control.

There is a multitude of ways to say this: Choose your battles, focus on your scope, mind your own business,… you get the drill. More often than not, if you focus on what you can control, you can improve and optimize those things. And sometimes, you will come to realize that great things and achievements are a culmination of solution-oriented actions that you were able to execute.

14. Studying does not have to be hard.

I believe that the future is modular. Education will be suited and customized to you. Take advantage of this. Studying does not have to be forced.

15. Cleaning is caching for your mind and body.

Working from home, I found that I worked best when my workspace is clean. Not just my operating system, but the state of my room/office. When I find myself cleaning my room, I remove items that don’t serve me anymore and I can give those items away. I also free up a lot of space in my room.

16. Work on your boundaries.

Whether it’s with family, friends, lovers, or coworkers, take the time to draw a line - write them down if needed - of what items, actions, and treatment, you feel comfortable with. You don’t need to make sense of why they are your boundaries for now. But once you start practicing that there are things that don’t make you comfortable, it will be easier for you to figure out how to stand your ground when you need to and also figure out if these boundaries are healthy for you or not.

17. Sometimes you just got to do what you got to do.

Procrastination comes from a myriad of reasons - anxiety, unrealistic expectations, and lack of organization. Sometimes you just got to face your problems head-on. Sometimes this means facing one new fear each day and getting used to getting rejected, getting bad feedback, etc. When you do what you have to do, you take off the burden of thinking about what anyone else would think about what you’re doing.

18. You don’t need to try to fit in anywhere. Eventually, you will figure it out.

As social creatures, we tend to want to fit in into different cliques and groups. In life, you’ll figure out that you will eventually find those groups during moments you least expect. And the perfect bit about it, you don’t have to try hard to find your people.

19. Every decision everyone suggests is optional to you.

Yes, even college. Going to school. Everything is an option for you. You have a multitude of choices. People will give you suggestions on which path to take, but ultimately the decision is up to you.

20. Don’t expect a lot from people.

With attachment comes expectations and with expectations comes frustration. Expectations muddle understanding especially if it’s coming from a place of assumptions. Once you start getting to know people first, you will start to figure out how to create realistic expectations.

21. Talk to a lot of people.

Networking has been very hard for me. As an introvert, it takes up a lot of energy just to start a conversation with anyone. Talking to people, different kinds of people is a good practice in storytelling, public speaking, communication, and empathy. I remember always initiating conversations with Uber drivers and getting to know them on a personal level. It was a practice that I wish I did more often with different kinds of people and I learned how important it is to be empathetic not just internally but also in how I convey my message.

22. Sometimes some things just don’t work out the way they should.

And that’s exactly how it’s supposed to play out in life. What’s important is you put your best foot forward. Keep swimming and you’ll eventually reap all the benefits life has to offer, to sugarcoat it a little bit.

23. Death is imminent.

Death is something that I feel in the Philippines we don’t talk about. Being a self-proclaimed death-positive person, I embrace mortality. I fear the idea of the unknown but knowing that everyone will eventually face death is comforting to me. It is the one thing that I’m sure I share with everyone. The idea of dying removes me from starting petty arguments or engaging in ones. It relieves me of expectations that I initially set out for myself. It has given me the gift of appreciation for every breath I take and for every day I wake up. When there’s a limit in supply, we start to appreciate things more. This mindset has never left my mind ever since.

24. Life is also in the little things.

We always see successful people on the internet doing the craziest things in life and reaching goals nobody has done before. But seldom do we talk about the little things that turned into greater things that these successful people focused on - from little habits to small acts of kindness - rarely do we look into why successful people are successful.

25. Soft skills are important in life.

I’m grateful that I got to work with one of the most employee-centric companies in my country where they trained people to be the best that they can be. And this is where I learned about soft skills. It is not how good you are technically, but it is your attitude towards work that takes you places. Soft skills like empathy, critical thinking, being solution-oriented, and listening skills, are just one of the few skills I started to hone when I started working. When we enter college we don’t usually get a class that talks about these skills. More often than not, these skills are more important than any learned hard skill.

26. Music is food for the body and the mind.

I rely on music for relaxation and leisure. I have never found anything else that comes close to the therapeutic effects of music. And it comes free via radio or the internet. There were also cases where music was used in the medical field.

27. Honesty is the best policy.

Some people mix the words honesty and privacy. Honesty for me is being authentic about who you are and being clear about what you want and what you think. Honesty does not have to mean being mean or unkind. It means being true to yourself and being open to being vulnerable. When you’re honest, you let the best and worst parts of you out into the light, and you become more human.

28. Lean into your core beliefs.

Your core beliefs are the beliefs that you think makeup who you are. This might include your preferences in life, what food you like, what art you would like to do, etc. They are beliefs that for you you would choose not to change if given the chance. If these beliefs help you become who you are and help you grow, lean into them and trust them. You would see that it’s easier to achieve things when you like what you are doing.