14 Lessons From Turning 25

I recently turned 25, and this made me pause to do some math, and I realized the gross revenue of businesses I’ve been part of building surpassed $28,000,000. This was really cool!

I’m also getting married next year. Marriage, getting older + a long weekend had me pause since life feels like it’s come a long way.

All of this had me stop and ask myself, what have I learned?

I’ve often sprinted through life so fast that I can’t even remember what I did last week.

I do know that I’ve been humbled by life in so many ways. I do want to document some of what I’ve learned so far. I don’t want to forget the nitty-gritty details that played a part in my own personal version of success.

This is a very selfish piece of writing because in many ways it’s a reminder for me of the principles and learnings that I most enjoy.

I hope by sharing some of what I’ve learned publicly (to the likely 3 people who will read it), I create a social pact with myself to act in these ways more often.

14 lessons for a better life:

1. Your time with everyone in your life has a clock.

People die. People get sick. People will not be here forever. Your time with these people in your life is rented. Whether it’s a beautiful thing, a promotion to a new city, a marriage that reprioritizes actions or a terrible thing, sickness or death— your time is rented and the lease will eventually end.

Sometimes you’ll get the end notice well in advance, other times it’ll happen suddenly. It’s your job to make it count.

2. Life is picking your struggle.

Everything in life is hard. And the struggles you choose to pick will determine what you’re successful at in life.

1. Want strong relationships with friends? You pick the struggle of prioritizing them over other goals sometimes.
2. Want a happy marriage? Get ready to make the hard conversations easy ones by practicing them.
3. Want to be in shape? Get ready to enjoy the struggle of eating right and pushing yourself physically.
4. Want to kill it in your career? Congrats, you’ve picked the struggle of immense hard work and showing up to push yourself when you might not want to.
5. Want to be calm and happy? Get ready to struggle with your thoughts to calm yourself and train your brain to perceive hard moments as good.

Everything is hard. You get to choose your struggle and what you pick will determine in what area of your life you succeed. Try to pick one with high ROI for the time you’ll spend - it’ll be hard.

3. If you’re angry, just shut up.

Nothing good comes from angry decisions. Anger will accelerate the speed of your reaction but it won’t increase the quality. Anger can be subdued in many ways and time is a great drug to numb your anger. Take the night and sleep on it, exercise, run, write. But do not act in anger. And keep your mouth shut.

4. Money is a catalyst to improve areas of your life and nothing more.

No digit will ever make you happy.

Money is important and solves problems. Money has utility and purpose. But it isn’t the sole purpose. It won’t fill the void of purpose you’re missing. Purpose is derived from a life with meaningful people, meaningful work and dreams worth chasing. Every single time you’re lost and fixate on the fact that “money will make you happy”, it’s a sign that there’s some part of you that isn’t up to par with who you believe or want yourself to be. You’re missing something obvious and you know it. Look deeper.

5. You deserve nothing from anyone, and everything is earned.

You’re not as good as you think. You’re not as special as you think. The moment you start to feel special, precious, or a snivelling sense that you deserve something from anyone—that self-importance rising to the top of your brain—that’s your ego. Snuff it out. Crush it. That’s called entitlement. And the belief that you deserve privileges does you no good.

It’s less likely that you’re where you are because the world wronged you. It’s more likely that that’s just what you actually deserve. Be confident and grateful, yes, but not entitled.

6. You don’t rise to the level of your goals; you rise to the lowest acceptable standard for yourself and to the level of your systems in life.

You don’t wake up one day dream up that big ol’ grand vision of your life and just will yourself into that existence. You end up at the standard that is truly acceptable for yourself.

If you truly want to reach a goal, raise your standard in that area in life. A good way to think about this is to think about a standard you refuse to compromise on. Maybe it’s maintaining a certain weight, brushing your teeth each morning, a certain level of money in your savings or net worth - there’s some standard that if it falls too low - you fix it immediately. You rise to your minimum acceptable standard.

7. You will always be uncertain.

The mistake is in assuming that the uncertainty ahead will ask today's version of you to face future you’s challenges. Today’s version of you can’t handle that. Future you can. Growth is a constant in life. You will change. You will face challenges that forge you. You will experience pain that hardens you. You will have experiences that shift your values. Today’s version of you is not the future version of you. To be that version of you, you need to get to work.

8. You can’t create more time, but you can get more from it.

You can seemingly slow time down being there. Really. Being. There. You can get more from the limited time you have by eliminating distractions, deleting thoughts, and really diving into the present moment. Really stop and pay attention to your motions, the sounds, the smudges on the screen you’re reading this on, the thoughts in your brain of the next thing you’re thinking about. When you do this—life slows down. A lot. So much, that it can feel boring. Try it.

9. Life is paradoxical.

The quicker you learn to live with the paradoxes in life the easier it is to be happier.

1. Yes, in life there are beautiful moments with rest, ease, laughs and bliss.
2. Yes, in life there are struggles and challenges that will push you and give you great meaning.
3. Yes, in life and work sometimes you need push incredibly hard and neglect parts of personal life.
4. Yes, in life you need to balance life and not let work take over.

All of these are true. They can all be true at different moments in life. No one said you had to subscribe to one belief forever. You may need to be one person, in one moment, and a different one in another - it’s okay. It means you’re adapting.

10. Consistency beats intelligence, grandiosity, and drama.

Intensity makes for an exciting story, consistency generates good results. You can pick what you want more of. In my experience, good stories are great but good results are better. Consistency usually wins. (Intensity is important at times, but I prefer consistency)

11. If someone says something about you and it gets under your skin, it’s probably partially true.

I’ve learned that not all insults/comments are made equally. Some comments hurt you, and there’s comments that you laugh off.

In my experience, if someone says something and it gets under your skin, it’s probably because deep down - you believe them. And that hurts.

Alternatively, if someone says something, and you laugh it off it’s because it’s factually untrue - you know you don’t believe it.

Those feelings of anger, disdain or shame from a comment are better treated as data points for you to get to work in that are of life. Someone says you’re lazy and it pisses you off? Don’t get angry at them, look at yourself…

12. Remain playful and curious as your responsibilities and opportunities increase.

If you’re ambitious, you will likely have to take on an immense amount of responsibility to get where you want to go.

As people begin to depend on you and the world hands you more responsibility, it’s very easy to make “serious” your default. Being serious at times is important, but don’t let it become who you are.

Playfulness is incredible. It’s beautiful, it’s fun, it’s a great way to live life. Playfulness and curiosity add colour and texture to life. Pay the price for your version of success with your actions and time but not with your playfulness.

13. You can learn anything.

I tricked myself into thinking so many things were “impossible” or “not for me”. Now I’ve just realized that I was bad at learning. Realizing that learning to learn can be learned (Dr.Seuss be damned) is game-changing.

Nothing is too hard to pick up - you’re probably just bad at learning. It’s important to learn how to think clearer to understand complex topics: chunking, spaced repetition, mind maps, retention by taking action, writing concepts, all play a factor in learning better. I used to read papers at university from friends in different programs to try to understand different concepts and I could literally feel my brain stretching itself. Your brain can handle the cognitive load and deserves to be challenged - flex it! Once you realize you can improve your ability to learn you unlock other areas in life.

14. Confidence is X⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ ⇒ Y > 90 ⇒ Z , where X = Action, Y = Results, Z = High confidence.

The idea is simple: Confidence is the belief that you can reliably produce a desired outcome, backed by repeated evidence of having done so in the past.

Confidence = X⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ ⇒ Y > 90 ⇒ Z . Where X = Action, Y = Results, Z = High confidence.

Or in the mathematical sense, if I take an action (x) 100 times, and get the result (y) greater than 90 times, then I have high confidence (z).

This one I owe to Hormozi but I’ve tweaked it to make sense for myself. In the spirit of learning “anything”, this one stuck with me. The concept is that the more you do something and get the same outcome, the more confidently you can predict it’ll happen again. I love this because it re-defines confidence as something you can actually build and control.

That’s a wrap.

I have so much more, but this is what stands out to me so far. I also need to get back to work.

Honestly, it’s felt great to write this so far, and I’m excited for what is next. I also know it’ll come from taking action in the world and acting in goodwill to those around me.

This was good fun. But now it’s time to put this into practice. (Again. And then again. And again.)

Arry Pandher