It’s a shame I didn’t learn it much sooner.

This will upset many people, but it is my truth.

These are the darkest but necessary lessons life has taught me.

I wish I had known them in my twenties.

1. To live well, you need time, money, and energy. But all in the same time-space. Because if you don’t have the money, you can’t do anything; if you don’t have time, even if you have the money, you won’t be able to do anything; and without energy, even if you have time and money, you won’t feel like doing anything 🙂
2. Denial is the road to failure. Acceptance is the first step to success. Denial is closing your eyes. To accept is to open them to the opportunity yet to come. To stop denying reality is the fastest way to move forward. Tip: approach the things you deny and reject, and learn to use them, or you will become obsolete. — Behind every excuse (denial), there is a fear; overcome it. Note: not being afraid when others are afraid is a great advantage that all early adopters of new technologies know.
3. You have less useful time than you think. According to the World of Statistics, you will spend 26 years sleeping, 12 years working, 8 years shopping, 3.6 years eating, 3.2 years on the internet, 3 years on social networks, and 2 years in meetings, not counting the 240 days you will spend in the bathroom or the time you will spend cleaning the house. So if you are lucky and live 90 years, you will have 32 years of helpful time, not quality time, because your age is inversely proportional to the quality of your time (as a general rule).
4. The power of feeling brand new. The most productive thing you can do is wake up in a good mood. Being in a good mood is a decision but also a skill you train. Anger and negativity hijack your attention, weaken your reason, drain your energy, and exponentially increase your problems.
5. Do you know what hope is? Your life itself defending itself from the world. Don’t lose it for anything or anyone. Life is a desert, and your hope is the water in your canteen.
6. Having goals is more important than you think. Without direction, you are like a castaway swimming in circles in the middle of the sea; sooner or later, you will run out of strength and drown or be eaten by sharks.
7. What matters is to be present in every chapter of your life. — They will tell you to “turn the page”. But if you live turning the pages, you will have reached the end of the story by the time you realize it. And there will be no turning back.
8. Don’t complain so much. The times of the universe are perfect, and everything has its moment under the sun; setbacks do not exist; they are just unexpected changes in the script of your life. If you are a spiritual baby, you will throw a tantrum. Still, if you are spiritually mature, you will open your eyes to receive what you must learn with gratitude and willingness.
9. Don’t look good or sound smart; try to be helpful. When it comes down to it, people want results, not words.
10. People don’t have ideas. Ideas have people. But ideas are unfaithful lovers. Be sure that when you have a good idea, more people will have that same idea at the same time you do. And if you don’t take advantage of it, someone else will. We are like doors that ideas keep banging on until they can enter this reality.
11. Your mood is related to the reality you inhabit. If you are good, you attract interesting people and opportunities even if you stay in your city. If you are bad, you attract scarcity and catastrophes even if you move to another continent.
12. You have not found your soul mate if they say to you phrases like these: “I love you, but leave me alone.” “Love after 30 is overrated.” “True infidelity is not physical; it’s emotional.”
13. The beginnings are where you’re really at stake. A project’s highest intensity level always has to be at the beginning because the foundation of what you do determines its direction. Then, you can delegate.
14. All the losers do the same: complain, complain, complain. Just do the work your best and try to improve daily; sooner or later, you’ll win the game. And shut the f*ck off. (This advice helped me the most in my adult life.)
15. The higher you grow, the clearer you see. There are things you can only understand once you grow as a human being. And if you don’t see them yet, it’s because it’s not time. But don’t worry, you will eventually find the answers to your questions (and you won’t like many). I give you one of my answers, “What we look for is what we choose. That’s why you have to stop looking for buts, or you’ll end up choosing mediocrity”.
16. Working hard leads you to fail hard. Working hard does not guarantee better results. Working hard usually means working harder than necessary to achieve something with the corresponding waste of energy, time, and resources. Don’t work hard, work smart.
17. A disturbing theory. We have free will because life would be a farce without it. But there is an omnipresent creator outside of time and space who already knows the alternative endings of our lives according to our choices, thanks to free will. Therefore, since I believe that this creator that some call God and another universe is benign, I think he sends us the famous signs — feathers, the 11:11, premonitory dreams, etc. — so that our destiny is the most optimal possible in accordance with our will.
18. The worst poverty is not the economic one but the mental and emotional one. Suppose you have a lot of money and you are poor mentally. In that case, you will hurt yourself with that money, and you will hurt others by not having empathy (emotional intelligence).
19. Walk as if you were in a hurry to get to an important appointment. Opportunities rarely present themselves to disengaged people. Yet everyone wants to hear more from Mr. or Ms. Busy because they believe that if you’re in such a hurry, it’s because you’re efficient at what you do.
20. When tragedy knocks at your door, don’t waste time lamenting. Take action. It is not the youngest, most astute, or most intelligent who survives but the one who best adapts to the environment.

A virtual hug