What To Do In Your 20’s To Avoid Regret In Your 30’s
A life lesson written by Bryan Dusseau.

Note
Notice that I mentioned “What To Do” not “What Not To Do”. Those words are key. J.K.Rowling once said “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.” That quote has been glued to me. Especially when I see that pattern happen to the people around me. If you spend too much time worrying, you’ll never get anything accomplished.

It’s Not Too Late
If you’re fresh in your 20’s, or wondering if you’ve done your 20’s right, then this lesson is for you. If you feel that you are a failure and all hope is lost, don’t give up just yet. You actually have quite the advantage. The comeback is like a protagonist in a film. Once you find out what you need to do, you can go find that thing. Once you find it though, you’re going to have to take it. And that, comes with a price. Similar to Batman catching the Joker. When he does, Joker gives Batman a choice. To save Harvey Dent, or his beloved Rachel Dawes. Batman chooses Rachel, but mistakenly saves Harvey instead. This is the price Batman pays. Gotham needs Batman, but Bruce Wayne wanted to retire Batman to be with Rachel. The moral of the story is, what do you need to do, and what do you want to do? Know the difference, weigh your options, and follow your truth. The universe screams what you need to do. You just have to look and listen. Wants can be disguised as rose colored glasses, and they typically are.

Lessons
Here are the lessons I have learned in my 20’s.
Have A Foundation Built, Or Start Working On One: I am sure you’ve heard of the 10,000 hour rule. If not, it takes 10,000 hours of practice (accurate practice) to master a skill. The key to this, once you have mastered one skill, you know what it takes to master another skill. And if you learn another skill that aligns with your current skill, it is easier to learn, and they benefit each other. When you are a child, and a teenager, you have the time to master a skill. You are not overwhelmed by a job, raising children, and whatever else life throws at you. But if you have not mastered a skill, I suggest doing so. It builds confidence, competence, and something you can be proud of. Not to mention, it makes you useful for a career, self employment, and you’re involved in a niche’ community where you can build relationships. The people I see that do not have a skill in their life are the people that go to dead end jobs, dread coming home, and regret their lives. They pretend to be in that “party phase” in their 40’s, 50’s, even 60’s. The only thing that makes them happy is forgetting about the world. Then on their deathbed, they will be full of regrets. I worked at a retirement home for two months in my 20’s as a nurse’s assistant. I never had a realization so hard in my life. Everyone was miserable. Everyone! Even me. Nobody wanted to be there, not the workers, and not the patients. Do you ever hear old people talk? When they ask each other how they are doing, they say “Not dead yet.” Or they walk up to each other and say “I see you’re still alive and kicking.” Look, I am all for a good joke, I love humor. But humor is also truthful. It’s like a little release valve on your perspective in life. If all you have to look forward to is death, then have you ever lived? Obstacles come up in life that we have to overcome. And sometimes we lose a skill due to struggles. Don’t be a has been, because you will always dwell on the past. Cultivate a new skill. Talk about what you currently do, not what happened five, ten, twenty years ago.

In Your Twenties, You Can Potentially Be The Fittest You Possibly Can Be
I am not saying you can’t do something physically impressive after your 20’s, and I am not saying you can’t be in better shape later in life vs. Your 20’s. But one thing I have learned is, in your 20’s is where your potential peak fitness level can be. After your 20’s, your body starts deteriorating. I am currently 33 years old, and I can already start feeling body aches. It takes longer to recover, and I am not as athletic. I am still very athletic, I just can’t fight in rings, run to and from work, race in marathons, and spend hours in the gym anymore. I have to pick and choose, life is different for me now. Regardless, I am thankful I was able to take advantage of my time and fitness in my 20’s. I am a very healthy 33 year old, and I plan on being healthy the rest of my life. Tom Brady is 44 years old and still plays in the NFL. That all came from putting in the hard work in his twenties, and even before that. I want to hike, camp, and see the world, and I prefer to not huff and puff and give up.

Have A Sense Of Direction
You don’t have to know exactly what you want to do or need to go when you turn 20 years old. But you should have an instinct on wanting to improve. We need to be in motion during our twenties. That involves taking actions and making choices. This is where you move out of your parents house, see the world for what it is, and where you see yourself in that world. I saw myself wanting to enjoy my life by creating. I love creating, whether it is musically, story driven, intellectual/funny conversations, spending time with my children, cooking, brewing, adventures, creating memorable moments with my friends, and romantic evenings. If you would have asked me when I was 20 years old where I saw myself at 30 years old, I wouldn’t know where to start. I probably would have guessed a personal trainer in a prestigious gym, or for elite military operatives. That definitely would have been really cool, but still, I think I would have been confined to a certain role in life. I need flexibility. I am always learning, creating, and striving for new endeavors. But in my twenties, I did it right. I followed what my instincts told me. I went to college, landed a good paying job with benefits, which helped me save money for a new car, a house, and support two kids. I kept the momentum going and steam rolled. The thing is, it only takes a blink of an eye for life to steam roll you back. You can potentially lose everything that you currently know of. You can bet it will happen. The secret to battling that is just to start over and get back to steam rolling. If you dwell on the past, you’ll be stuck in the past. Which means you will never build a future, then you’re just angry at the world. You’ll start blaming everyone for everything that has happened to you. Don’t worry about everyone, worry about yourself and your timeline. What are you currently doing? If you keep doing what you are currently doing in life, what will the next 10 years look like? You’re not even guaranteed to see the next 10 years, and this is how you want to act? We’re on a rock hurling through space at 67,000 miles per hour, but you’re not moving at all. You’re still going to the same bar, seeing the same people, talking about the same thing every time. We are designed to be in motion. That is how the universe works, and that is how we work. Always be in motion, and when you get knocked down, start over. Life stings, sort of like a bee. You get stung, “ouch!”, you take the stinger out, patch it up, take a breather, then continue your day. You don’t let a bee sting stop you. Some people are deathly allergic to bees, and they don’t let that stop them either. Life stings a bit more than a bee, but the same motions apply. 

Live Your Life
I know, this seems a bit anti-climatic. In your life, you are the star of the show. You have to make the decisions in your life. No one is holding your hand. You could be a trust fund baby fed with a silver spoon and wiped with silk toilet paper, but if you are not in charge of your own life, you will always feel empty on the inside. When it came to myself, I was a straight shooter. I knew what I wanted, what I needed, and I did not hesitate. But throw other people in the mix that have all kinds of personalities, that’s a recipe for drama. If you are not in charge of your decisions, and you give the power to other people, then that is a recipe for tragedy. Shakespeare’s famous quote “To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And, by opposing, end them.” It is your choice to be a victim, or a hero in your life. I found out that I was playing the victim. I didn’t have a victim mentality per say, but I realized I was not living the life I wanted. Did I have regrets? Of course, no one is perfect, especially me. You can’t change what has happened. You can learn from it though. And regardless what you do, there will be some sort of regret if you dwell on it. It’s the grass is greener on the other side effect. If you marry someone one, you’ll regret not having the single life. If you stay single your whole life, you’ll regret not cultivating a life long romantic relationship. If you think about what you have not chosen, it will poison your mind. Should have, could have, would have, who cares. What are you doing now, and what are you going to do is what you truly have control of. Keep in mind, once you do have the realization that you are playing victim, it takes unbearable determination to fight your way out of that role. The world sees you as you are, and has defined your role for you. Now you have to prove to the world who you really are, and that takes a hero’s journey. It’s the hardest thing you can possibly do, but being a hero is not easy. You’ll make some enemies, and you’ll hurt people. It’s not a good feeling, but you have to do what is right, and that is to take charge of your own life. It’s time to live, not just exist.

Build A Circle
Build a circle of friends and family that reflects your values. You are who you attract. So if everyone around you is toxic, gossips, and is stagnant…guess what, you are too. Or you’re heading that direction. People want to bring you to their level. Whether that is down to their level to make themselves feel better, or up to their level to make both of you feel better. You will have to weed your circle. It’s like a garden, you have to tend to it. Yes, you can reconnect later. But if you stop tending your garden, weeds will grow. People change so much in their lives. They may seem the same, and still have that foundation that you have always known. But they build on top of that foundation. Whatever you consume, you reflect. How do you think cults happen? Do you think the 909 people that committed mass suicide in 1978 at Jonestown ultimately wanted that choice? In your state of mind, you’d think, well they did make that choice. But you could easily be one of those people. If you are around certain people often enough, you pick up habits, quirks, sayings, lifestyles, and choices. If someone is in your head so much that you can’t even think for yourself, they become your subconscious. It can happen to anyone. This is why it is important to tend your garden and pull out the weeds. Water your friend’s garden. Show them that you care. It really doesn’t take much, just connections, lifting each other up, laughing, and enjoying each other’s company. Life happens, we create families, move, get sick, fall into a rut, ect. But with technology now, and a little bit of effort, you can make time for your circle. And if all else fails, if you have a horrible week, you at least have your circle to look forward to. 

Pick Your Battles
You’re not going to change someone’s mind that is not open for change. Most people come into an argument with their perspective and emotions. They want to express how they feel, not understand how you feel. Ron White said “You can’t fix stupid”. You’re just going to leave feeling more frustrated. This is the problem with social media. No matter what you say, someone will interpret it from their own perspective. And if that person is in a reactive state, they are going to contribute their negative emotions in a response. Idiots are like rocks. They exist in the world, but all you have to do is walk over, around, or ignore them. Now, if a rock is thrown at you, it affects your well being. It hurts! You have to have a line that you won’t let people cross, or else you’ll get stoned to death. But make that line reasonable. It can’t be to defend all of your beliefs at all costs. They are your beliefs for you, not for anyone else. Everyone is allowed to have their own belief system. That is what makes life so chaotic, interesting, and fun. We’re just one big world of emotional flubbers (The movie Flubber starring Robin Williams) bouncing around how we feel back and forth to each other. Instead of bouncing our feelings around, we should let them pass through us and not hold onto them. If you hold onto a feeling, it has power over your. If you let a feeling pass through, you have power over the feeling. Once your gain emotional intelligence, you’re playing life in “Damn I’m Good” difficulty. (Duke Nukem).

Self Awareness
This is a tough one. I am always learning about self awareness, and most likely will never fully understand. All I can do is share my perspective. I have put over 20,000 hours of research into this, so I will try to put it in a nutshell. A textbook definition for self awareness would be something similar to Conscious of your own thoughts, feelings, reactions, how you see yourself, and how you perceive other people see you. You are more the observer of your own life versus the writer. You can think of your self awareness as a biographer. The universe writes the autobiography. We can’t fathom how the universe works. We can only try to understand it from our perspectives. So we write books, papers, observe, create documentaries, art, replicas of the universe. We do the same within our own minds. Think of your mind as a universe. You can’t understand it exactly, but you can try to understand it. You do this by reducing the noise. This can be noise you hear from your ears, and noise you have in your mind (memories, racing thoughts, anxiety, and subconscious). Once you reduce the noise, you can explore. Think of it as a fog of war. There is uncertainty everywhere, except where you exactly are. The only thing you can see is in your line of sight. Everything else is pitch black. Picture this inside the realm of your mind. Now you can explore one thing at a time. Observe without judgment. Perhaps you have a bout of anxiety, and you don’t understand why.  Ask yourself “Do I have anxiety?” “Why?” “Is it doing me any favors by holding onto it?” “What will make me feel better?” It is best to catch your emotions as soon as possible. Or else you have to undo a lifetime of emotions. And yes, you do hold onto them, they are called memories. We have memories that our mind suppresses for survival. Carl Jung said “We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation did not liberate, it oppressed.” If you keep avoiding your dark side, you will keep feeding it and letting it run wild. If you accept that you do things out of character, think things that you don’t want to think, then you are now interacting with your dark side. Let’s say you have an anger problem, but you don’t have any reins on your emotional outbursts. Then that means you are not interacting with your dark side, you’re letting it take total control like a wild animal. Think of your dark side as a wolf. No matter what you do, a wolf is a very aggressive predator. You can’t tame a wolf entirely. But you can give the wolf what it needs (food/prey, habitat, and other wolves.) If you give the wolf what it needs, it won’t be leaving the habitat and try to eat you. Your dark side is the same. If you have anger, you can write your emotions in poetry, and stories. You can use it in martial arts, sports, and art. You can take up a career like law and fight for what you’re passionate about. The Buddhists call it monkey mind. Monkey mind is like a little toddler in your head that gets distracted and emotional. You have to calm that child so you are not distracted. Self awareness isn’t just about how you feel, but how you make other people feel as well. The words and expressions you give can really affect someone. And if you can’t see it on their face or in their body language, then you don’t realize how powerful your words and actions can be to a human being. People look up to you, and kids repeat what you say and do. You best believe there is always someone seeing what you are doing. You may not notice, but they do. I need to stop writing about this lesson, because I’m digressing. In essence, pay attention to your thoughts, words, emotions, inflections, body language, heart beat, and breath. When you feel confident in that, you can observe it in others as well.

Be Accountable For Your Actions
Admit your mistakes, it’s a sign of strength. When you admit your mistake, you have to troubleshoot how it happened, and use your problem solving skills to overcome your mistake. If you make a mistake repeatedly, be honest with yourself, are you really trying to do better? Or are you justifying your bad behavior? It’s a tough one, and it takes courage. Also, have empathy and understand what your mistake has done to others. What you do can really hurt someone, and sometimes that someone is an innocent bystander like a child.

If You Have Children, Spend As Much Time As You Can With Them
They will never be children again, and the joy childhood brings is a blessing from the universe. Nothing can compare to cuddling your little boy or girl. They have unconditional love for you, regardless if you are mad, sad, crazy, or corny. They love the crap out of you, and that my friend, is amazing. Don’t make that a regret for you or your child.

The Only Thing Permanent Is Change
Mother nature has seasons, and so do we. Every year summer is a little different. Sometimes we have El Nino in winters, sometimes we have a record snowfall. Things happen in our lives that we have no control over. A saying I have that I almost say everyday to my kids is “The more you fight against it, the harder it fights back at you. You have to slow down, and go with the flow. That’s how everything is in life”. It’s like the cheap finger trap toy. You put your finger in one end of this paper tube, and someone else puts their finger in the other end of the tube. The goal is to free your fingers. Well, the more you fight, the tighter it gets. But if you work together and bring your fingers closely, your fingers become free from the trap. You have to work with life, not fight against it. There is no changing the past, only doing better next time in the here and now, and thereafter. People become sick, accidents happen, divorce happens, death happens. Just like people can have their health, protection, marriage, and youth. If we accept the world for what it is, we can enjoy what it brings. The only things we have control over is our reasoned choice, reactions, and perspectives. We can’t control what happens to us, but we can choose how to view it, and what to do about it if we even can. There is a very old children’s song that sings “Row, row, row, your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream”. For you to go anywhere in life, you have to row, and keep rowing to get there. But don’t row too hard. Gently row down the steam because life if beautiful. But life is really what you dream life is. It’s what you perceive. If you want a good life, you have to work for it, but you have to work with the changes in life. You have to go with the flow. Be thankful for what life gives you, because it can be worse. Tomorrow is never promised. Then as your perspective changes due to reaping what you sow, you start seeing growth in life, and all the blessings that life comes with. Be aware though, there are droughts where we don’t see any growth at all. In fact it can be devastating. But that doesn’t mean where you are at is forever. Because the only thing permanent is change.

Conclusion
By taking on these life lessons, you will be more than ready for your 30’s. Most people don’t learn these lessons at all in their lifetime. You will start seeing this everyday in your life. Then you see it in stories, movies, art, speeches, and conversations.

Action
Have you, or are you living your 20’s like this? If not, it is never too late to create your own lessons.

     We all see the world from our own perspective. You are the center of your own universe. After the age of two, you realize that you are on your own. That you have your own identity separate from everyone else. At two years old and younger, we tend to be attached to our mother. We identify ourselves as her. And if we are not careful, when we are older, we identify ourselves as what we wear, tattoos, piercings, hair style, passions, intelligence, accomplishments, and titles. It makes sense right? How we feel on the inside reflects how we appear on the outside. This is true to a certain extent. 

     Imagine you were trapped in your house that is on fire. And the only way out is to jump. When you hit the ground, your head hits the ground extremely hard. Everything you own is burned. Your clothes, your belongings, everything that you worked for. Not only that, you are now in the hospital with third degree burns. Your hair is gone, the tattoos are not visible, and when you hit your head, you lost self identity. So now who are you? If something can be taken away, then does that something really define who you are? What are you left with when everything has been stripped away from you?

     Moms can have a real struggle with this. When their kids grow up, they need her less and less. Her whole world has revolved around being a mom. All she thinks about is her children. Then when the children move out, all is lost. Her babies talk to her less and less. Then they grow up and start families of their own. So their time is extremely limited. Why do moms experience this? Well, it’s easy. She makes her kids number one, and puts herself on the back burner. She has less date nights, because she falls into the rut of doing the same thing everyday. Wake up, wake the kids up, feed them breakfast, take them to school or the babysitter, go to work, pick the kids up, make dinner, spend time with the kids, put them to bed, and have just enough time to maybe watch a show and have a glass of wine before bed. This routine is every weekday. Then when the weekend comes, she has to catch up on all of the house chores, entertain her kids, and try to catch up on sleep from the over exhaustion. 

     This doesn’t just happen all of a sudden. That is why the little things in life are so important. It’s not so much huge traumatic events that ruin our lives. Humans are tough. Look how far we've come along. We have overcame death, illness, war, disease, financial crisis, and famine. These have happened many times in history, and will keep happening. We are getting better each time this happens. We are learning. Perhaps not as a whole, but as individuals we are slowly waking up. It’s the little things that sneak up on us. The miscommunication leading to resentment, which leads to screaming matches, then leads to taking the energy that should be going into your relationship leaking out into someone or something else. And even before that, we need to look at intentions. Why are we doing what we are doing with this person? And does that person have the same intentions? And even before that, knowing who you are on the inside will reflect your intentions. If you understand your thought process, little quirks, your dark side, what exhilarates you, what you’re passionate about, pet peeves, your personality type, and take charge of your actions and responsibilities; then maybe you can start to understand that in someone else. How are you supposed to communicate, reciprocate, and understand your partner’s human behavior if you don’t know your own? You’re sort of just sucking them dry unintentionally. And it’s the extreme narcissists that do actually understand this process, but choose to intentionally suck you dry. If you do understand yourself, you can avoid the narcissistic types. I do want to add that we all have narcissistic tendencies. We look at ourselves in the mirror, check notifications, talk about ourselves, and strive for perfection. It happens. But by understanding that, we can see that in others. We can be compassionate. But when you fall off the deep end on a certain characteristic, then the rest of your traits are lacking. All of your characteristics form a team. No one individual can compete against a team. A team makes up each other’s weaknesses by combining their strengths. If you only have one strength, you tend to fall down a rabbit hole and become blind to what you are doing. The greatest skill a team can have is communication. If the team understands each other’s strength and weakness, they can communicate the next step. So when you and your romantic partner understand each other’s strength and weaknesses, you can communicate instead of repressing resentment. It’s always better to have the hard conversation now, because later on, it will be much worse.

     What you can do at this very moment is to start being aware. If you have no clue where to start, you can focus on your breath. Feel your breath go in and out of your lungs. Notice the little things in life. Like looking up at the stars at night, watching a bird outside your window, finding the humor in babies and kids out in public. Enjoy the taste of food. Be observant. Listen for once in your life. Be present in conversations. Be present in the room you’re in. Make a mental note when you’re energy level dips and you become depressed. Track back why you feel that way. Accept that you feel this way, and ask yourself, what would make me feel just a little better? What could possibly help this situation. If it is outside of your control, surrender yourself and let go of your control. You can’t change the situation. Then really feel your depression. Don’t try to hide from it. Face it head on. Notice how your body feels in this state. The more you avoid it, the more it creeps back up. But the more you face it, hell, you become bored. You become used to it. Then all of a sudden, something positive happens, and you get out of that rut. Then you think, life’s not so bad. We can’t always be happy. Life is suffering. But it is the little things that we can cherish that all adds up together and leads to great things.

"Character is simply habit long continued."
-Plato

I have been studying human nature for a few years now. It started internally by analyzing my reactions, thoughts, emotions, and habits. I knew I didn't want to feel the way I feel. To change that, I had to understand exactly what I feel, my triggers, and why I have those triggers. For example, I had very little self worth. It made no sense. I had competent skills that I was proud of. I had a great job. People seemed to like me. But I did not see myself this way. I was not confident, and my attitude towards myself reflected my world view. I was not the man I wanted to be. This was a flaw of mine. It still is, but I have to sharpen my mindset to keep it at bay. It is easy to fall back into a previous mindset if you fall into your old ways. Why did I feel like that? I grew up in a single parent household. I had to grow up fast. This made me extremely self reliant, which is a positive, but also can be downfall. I didn't ask for help, because I've always done things on my own. The way to redesign my character was to stop old habits, old ways of thinking. Every time I consciously thought in my old ways, I would disrupt the thought and tell myself that I am not going to think that thought anymore. I practiced this everyday all day. It is a battle. Especially when you have nothing to do but think at work. So I consciously decided to make it a habit to not think that way. This gives me fresh soil to plant new ideas, new habits. That is when I started ingesting knowledge and could never get my fill. I dove into TED Talks, podcasts, and books. I learned about mindfulness. Which led me into the zen art of Buddha. Then into strange territory such as Michael Talbot, Alan Watts, Black Hole theory, the list goes on and on. I slowly started applying principles that I could relate to. Such as how you feel on the inside is how you view the world and the people in it. Habits define a big part of our entire being. Habits give us meaning, content, and a place in the world. Henry Ford said: "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right." The world is a mirror. The next time someone says something to you that makes you feel irrational, take a second and ask yourself if this affects you in the grand scheme of things. Will this affect you tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Year? If it does, then it probably affected you before that person opened their mouth. You already thought of yourself in that light and are insecure. Blaming someone else will rationalize in your mind that the problem is not you, but someone else. That is the ego's way of survival to soothe you. But if you consciously rationalize a situation, you can separate each situation from each other, and deal with them as they come. Understand that everyone is going through what you are going through. They could be riding the waves of emotions and have no self control. They could be angry because their dad was angry. And their grandpa was angry. Their anger couldn't be subdued because they didn't understand where it came from. Someone could have anxiety because their mom was too careful and wouldn't let their child be independent because she is afraid of "What ifs?" Finding out where your flaws stem from gives a sense of comfort, understanding, and relief. Now you can be aware, which is half the battle. And sometimes we can't entirely wipe our flaws. It is impossible to be perfect. If we were perfect, we'd be boring. There would be no adventure, no risks, and the spark wouldn't be there. To be human is to be alive. To understand and enjoy emotions. To share what you feel with others. To experience the journey. Not simply to exist and arrive from point a to point b.

Have things ever worked out for you so much that it doesn't seem real? It's like when you climb a mountain top, you realize how beautiful it is. Time is still for the moment. You forget every single object, person, and emotion that you're attached to. You detach from reality and dive into the quantum; that all things are possible if the stars align and you put forth the effort. The stars have always been aligned. You just had to connect the dots.

I have been on the downswing for most of my life. I never connected the dots. I never looked up into the night sky and dare of the endless possibilities. I thought of what ifs and fantasized. But I never fantasized about making my fantasies a reality. I now have learned that it is not turning a fantasy into a reality, but more turning your reality into a fantasy. This is how you create endless possibilities. No one can take that away from you, because they are not on your level. I would rather have my head in the clouds just to get one look at ethereal glimpse of what my life could be. You could call me a romantic. But how could you not love everything that surrounds you? Once you start viewing within the lens of love, you start to see everything for what it is. Acceptance. It's the key that unlocks the door of love. The unknown in your life that you are scared shitless to dive head first into. But even Olympic gold medalists are terrified of their dives. And they dive every day. That is because they push their limits past the known. Because they know other divers are working while others are sleeping. When I learned to accept everything for what it is, to detach from the uncontrollable; which is everything, and I mean every little nuance and life event that has ever happened and will ever happen, and learn that what I really have control of is my perspective and my attitude on what does happen to me. I have a sense of clarity, observation, content, and have come to know peace. Through all of this, I can sense how I feel during a situation. Like okay I am scared that things are working out, and I am in the rising climax of my life. I've made mistakes, I've hit the dirt, I've gotten back up, and fallen back down. But one thing I did was never stop getting back up. That's always been ingrained into my DNA. It is in the human design. We are fighters. But if you don't wake up and see what you need to do to turn your life around, and live the story you have always wanted to write, you will be an unfinished book forever. I encourage you to keep fighting, even when the whole world is against you. I know how that is. I've been there. But in order for a diamond to be created, there needs to be a tremendous amount of pressure, then after all of the hell you've went through, you'll climb out the other side and see how beautiful everything really is.

I am going to talk about something that is taboo. I don't really like that word. Taboo. Anything that is taboo, is decided by society. I do believe that anything that falls under this category is extremely personal and sentimental. Of course it is something that we wouldn't casually share with our neighbor while grabbing the mail. This is something shared when you open your guard and show vulnerability, which is usually done when someone else shares a story about their vulnerability first. One of these taboo subjects is death. We usually don't think about it unless someone close to us passes away, you have a near death experience, you're diagnosed with a terminal illness, suicide, and homicide. And that is what recently happened to me.

This person wasn't close to me. I did go to school with her. She was 30 years old with two beautiful kids, and a hard worker. A good person. Unfortunately her life was taken away. I'm not going into details because it doesn't serve a purpose for this blog post. She happened to be one of the first people that regularly followed my content on the Purpessence podcast. She followed quite a bit, and in return, I did check her Facebook every once in a while to see what she's been up to. What I saw was someone rebuilding their life and finding their way. And I was seeing good progress. This really makes me proud that someone can have the choice to turn their life around for the better. And if my content played even a fraction of a percent towards that, it really humbles me. 

We all have a timeline. We can trace back from now to as far back as we can remember, and even pictures of us before our memories. We can see exactly how we got to where we are now. So it really is no surprise to ourselves that we feel and think this way at this exact moment. The timeline to the future is unwritten. You are the author. Ask yourself, "What do I want in the next chapter of my life?". Chapters tend to correlate with each other and come up with a final conclusion. Every hero in a story has an "all is lost" moment. It's when the hero loses everything they desire the most. He loses the girl. He can't defeat the bad guy. Or she loses the guy she loves. She messes up her big opportunity and gets fired from her dream job as a news reporter. This happens with every story. Your life is a story. Bad things in life happen. It's a fact. A fact of life. But why do they happen? Well, if they never happened, did life even happen? Or did you only exist? To know what happiness is, you have to know what sadness is. How can you know what love is, if you never had your heart break? How can you know what funny is, when you've never cried long into the night? How can you know what death is, if you don't know the beauty and value of what life brings into this world?

If you go backwards in your timeline, you become a teenager, kid, toddler, baby, to a fetus, to nothingness. Every moment you can at least find something of value in your life if you really try. Nothingness has value to. I believe nothingness, is actually the exact opposite of what you might think. It is the everything. The space between words. The calm in the wind. The peace between the thoughts. The bliss, zen, the flow of life. So really, nothingness is the foundation of life. Without nothingness, there would be no meaning to words, pictures, dancing, music, child birth, and all the highlights of your life. When you die, you rejoin this field where you were before you became life. Your flesh body dies, but your nothingness, your flow that exists in all life forms and in between life will still be. So without the tragedy of death, we wouldn't have the comedy of life. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. I wake up everyday because I value the flow of life. Where is your flow taking you?

​"Sometimes our hearts are all in, and we get wiped out. But you've got to stick it out. The only way out is through." (Gary Goodspeed from Final Space).

I referenced Gary in my last blog post as well. Can you tell that I like the show Final Space? Everywhere I am, I am listening. I write everything down in my notes app in my phone. I even text myself, and also message myself on Facebook. A few people can attest to that, and their reactions when they saw how much notes I actually take down is priceless. It is essentially a side note I can go back and reference. This quote from Final Space really stuck out for me. I had to pause and jot it down before I forgot. Gary rings so much truth in this situation. When we go all in, I mean dedicate our everyday lives including our heart, spirit, soul, body, and mind; we tend to be extremely vulnerable. And when we lose everything, we tend to think it was all for nothing, a waste of time, that dreams and love are just fantasy. The thing is, if you look at a timeline of your life from the point you were born up until now, it would make sense why you are who you are, why you are passionate about certain ideas and philosophies. The reason you are here at this point of time, is because you are the product of the events leading up to this exact moment. So when Gary says "you've got to stick it out." it means that if you keep practicing your shot, you're going to make it when the moment counts. If you want out of the situation you are in now, the only way is through. That means facing your fears head on. We all know this. We've known the entire time. But every time you run away, hide, go around, your fear, is still waiting for you. It will never go away. It will chase you forever until you're dead. We have to do things we don't want to do sometimes. That's life. We are not meant to be happy all the time. We are not meant to get along every single moment. We get angry sometimes. Sometimes for no reason. Just because we exist. Just because we woke up. But sticking it out, you will eventually get out of that rut. If you keep having bad luck, chances are your bad luck will eventually run out. By getting through situations we can put it behind us. Just because you made it through one situation, doesn't mean another one won't come up. Some people think they are riddled with bad luck. That is because they group up all of the bad things happening and put them all together in a basket. Personally, I compartmentalize my life. Just like my notes in my phone. Think of it like a library. We have genres, sub genres, shelves, alphabetical order. You can find exactly what you want because of the dewey decimal system. I do the same thing with situations, moments, emotions, philosophy, my entire life really. So when I have a big life situation I have to tackle, I treat it as a book. Each situation is a book on the shelf. Some could be a series that are related. Some could be completely unrelated. When I read books, I read one book at a time. If I don't like a book, I can always put it down. But the important thing is, when I read one book, I am not involved with another book. I make my way through the pages until the end. The more life experiences you have, the bigger library you have in your mind. If you compartmentalize, then you can go to the exact section of the library that you need to go so you can find references to face your current life situation. I call it a mental toolkit. This is when you sharpen your tools, and apply them to life.

"All of us are broken. Just a question of how much and how far we're willing to go to fix it." (Gary from Final Space).
Every single one of us has a battle inside. We can ignore it all we want, which tends to be the trend. We can either be all in, or not in at all. There is no such thing as kind of fixing our problems. That would be covering up the problem, and not facing it head on. But how do we do this? How do we fix our problems. You would be surprised if you stuck with one thing and kept going. I am talking about working and moving forward every day on this one thing. I have tackled quite the inner demons inside. What does this mean? It means I looked within, and noticed that I do have a dark side to me. We all do. There are behaviors that we have that are unexplainable. We say things like "I don't know what came over me." or "I wasn't feeling like myself." and even "Sorry." The thing is, our dark sides, are our true selves. It is a side that we are not putting a mask on for society. It is a side where we are not faking a smile to pretend we are okay. It is a side when we are by ourselves, we can feel truly judgement free. Until we try to hide our dark side. We pretend we don't have any evil in us. When we watch the news, we see monsters. We ask ourselves how can someone do such a thing? When in reality, we all can do such a thing. We are all extremely primal. We are not much different than we were 200,000 years ago. Yes, we have adapted, and we do have higher cognitive abilities, but we still have primal patterns, and the fight or flight mechanism. We have that lizard brain that we don't need as much in our current society. Technology is advancing faster than we are. We are still driven by emotions. That is because we are emotional beings. Before we were able to communicate with pictures and language, we had to communicate through emotions. Living in our current society, I feel that we are losing our skills as emotional beings. Yes we are driven by emotions, but at the same time, we don't realize that on a day to day basis. We try to rationalize some situation as if we are being targeted, or we put blame on others. Robert Greene said "People judge others based on what they did wrong, but judge themselves on what they did right." This is a major problem we have in society. Why is this happening? That is because we are losing grip of our true ability as humans. And that is understanding behaviors in other humans. It is how we survived all of this time. But instead of understanding, we are being consumed by emotions. They are contagious. Especially viral emotions, the posts and comments on social media. If you keep reading the same thing, you are going to build a pattern of thinking in your own brain, and start having a perspective that negatively impacts you. No matter how red pilled, nihilistic, rational, and logical you are, every situation that ever happens to you will first be processed emotionally. It is up to you on how you want to move forward. Do you want to let the emotions drive you? Or do you want to understand the emotions and behaviors that are involved? If we can have a scope of understanding human behavior all around us at the most basic and humanistic level, we can start understanding that not everyone is out to get us. That we can have the attitude we want in every situation and deal with how it affects us. We all have special gifts and niches we excel in. We all have compassion, logic, primal urges, and dark sides. Acceptance is the key. Accept that you are broken. Once you accept that, you have to decide how far you're willing to go to understand yourself.