Guiding Principles

Not sure what decision to make? Not sure how to live your life? Creating some goals? Below is a collection of principles to help guide you.

This is a collection of raw thoughts in response to ideas and observations I’ve been exposed to from podcasts, my own life, etc. What started as some quick notes after a YouTube binge has become a full library. If nothing else, this is simply a collection of good ideas I've come up with or come across.

This is my list as of Dec 2023. Expect this to be a rolling series.

Order of the list is chronological of when I wrote them. Not by value or priority.

Purpose

1. Always give more than you take. Die having given more than you have taken
2. When in doubt, operate in favor of the victory of mankind
3. Deliver blessings to those around you, even strangers. Be wary of providing those blessings if they will be underappreciated or improperly utilized. Do not expect blessings in return.
4. Seek out trials. Pray for struggle. Do shit that scares you.
5. Everything revolves around value. Everyone wants to be valuable or own value. Know your value, the value of others, and the value of everything.
6. Life meaning is the sum of our goals and the journey of achieving them
7. A crisis of meaning is really a crisis of identity. A strong understanding and acceptance of your identity will provide meaning
8. Strive to be a symbol of your values
9. Most people spend 8 hours a day building someone else's dream. You can at least spend 1 hour a day building your own.
10. Sometimes it is more valuable to focus on who you already are than the potential of who you could be
11. Everyone can provide reasons for not wanting to die. Can you provide reasons for wanting to live?
12. "Work, family, scene. Pick two." -Austin Kleon. Pick two and build your life around them. You will miss out on things.
13. Do not casually exist in the world. Plan your life. Live passionately.
14. Do not have a "fear of missing out." Instead you should develop a "joy of missing out." You can't do everything. If you have prioritized appropriately then you should have joy that you have sacrificed less important things.
15. Have a vision for your life, but equally important is an anti-vision. This anti-vision is the vision for what you don't want for your life. Alternate between the vision and anti-vision to maintain motivation toward your goals.
16. Power is enhancement of capacity. Joy is a byproduct of attaining new capacity by overcoming obstacles.

Financial

1. When purchasing assets consider total cost of ownership
2. Seek to employ your friends and retire your parents
3. Have 2 months of savings at all times. Anything beyond that should be used for bills, high-interest debt, hobbies, and experiences. Seldom buy unnecessary toys.
4. Success is having freedom and time to see and do the things you want. It is not your net worth
5. As a hunter-gatherer, consider money as something to hunt and gather

Interpersonal

1. Associate with people who are moving forward. Attend social events where you can meet those people.
2. With every social interaction prepare questions ahead of time. Prepare your answer to those same questions ahead of time.
3. With every social interaction provide one compliment and only one compliment
4. View all human motivations as anxieties. Anxiety against not being liked, anxiety of death, anxiety of disappointing others, etc. This illuminates motivations and also builds empathy for others as anxieties are universal.
5. Become an initiator of people coming together
6. People are social-seeking over truth-seeking. Be wary of when you provide truth

Self Improvement

1. Invest your time in your earning ability and skill acquisition
2. Invest your time in health and performance
3. Operate on the rule of 3’s: a third of your time should feel good, the next third should be neutral, and the final third terrible. Anything other than that is imbalance
4. Schedule 2 hours of suffering every day. That time should be used for doing things that you don’t want to do, but need to do to maintain lifestyle or move forward.
5. Your current talents and skill ceiling should not prevent you from trying new things. Avoid “gifted kid” and “main character” syndromes that live in your ego to prevent you from trying new things.
6. Know your body everyday
7. Play is transformative. Play often.
8. Read this list every day. You need to know your principles from memory. Most people don’t have their principles readily available
9. Read often. The act of reading is not actually about the content or the topic, but meditating on the thoughts within the content
10. Write often about your thoughts. This is how you mature your thoughts
11. Strive to enjoy work instead of the outcome of your work
12. Become strong so that others can rely on you
13. Substitute the guaranteed meaningless suffering for the potentially meaningful suffering
14. Beware decisions made out of practicality as therein is fear
15. Beware unearned wisdom.
16. Failure to integrate your Shadow will cast your Shadow upon others
17. People may seem better than you. Nobody is special however. Surpass them by emulating them
18. Whenever you need inspiration or motivation, look back at your previous accomplishments
19. Growth is the process of discarding what doesn't work
20. The skills required to win your previous fights may not be enough for your next fight
21. Visualization works but is often confused with imagination. Imagination at large is around fantasy and is unfocused. Visualization is focused imagination on the task and outcome at hand. For example, if you are studying for a test, visualize you studying and passing the test. Imagining yourself as successful (ie from passing the test) is not the same as visualizing.
22. Choose your battles, but beware choosing too few battles. Your lack of competitive nature is often a coping mechanism for not wanting to lose.
23. Restlessness is an indicator of a change being needed. Patience is only a virtue when in pursuit of your goals. If you're being forced to be patient that is unnecessary suffering.
24. Do not seek homeostasis. Adapt and improve instead of trying to go back to a more comfortable time
25. Instead of a "I have" mindset which is surrounded in possession, adopt a mindset around having a relationship with something. That way it is harder or less emotionally significant if/when it is taken from you
26. Make it painful to stay the same
27. Keep a log of your victories
28. The only thing between you and what you want are skills
29. Success is not wealth, but rather doing the things you want to do

Spiritual

1. Seek beauty in the world
2. Know your conscience everyday. Talk to it. This is prayer.
3. "Touch grass" is a meme, but has value. You must experience nature in all phases. Merely walking through a park is not enough. You must experience each season and movement of the sun.
4. Memento Mori. Meditate on your death, how you will be forgotten, regrets you would have if you died now, etc
5. Never stop believing in the magic of the world
6. Buddha had to give up his desire to reach enlightenment in order to achieve enlightenment

Morality

1. Human decisions can only be truly "moral" if they are freely made. A system that reduces or makes impossible human decisions inherently reduces or makes impossible moral decisions.

Emotional

1. Disappointment = Expectation - Reality. Manage your expectations and you'll never be too disappointed.
2. People don't want to be healed. They want to untraumatized.

Other

1. Good writing is the act of an ego death
2. Fitness is the rejection of your body as an idle canvas. To be fit is to be an artist that is expressing their inner selves via their outer selves.