Harsh truths I’ve come to know

1. Most of your friends aren’t really your friends. They’re just along for the ride when it’s fun or convenient. Your real friends are there for you when you have nothing to offer.

2. Remember: You may only see your loved ones a few more times.

3. You'll literally never know what you want to be when you grow up (and that's perfectly fine!).

4. Most people don't really care about you. The Spotlight Effect says that we overestimate the degree to which other people are observing our actions. This should be liberating.

5. You don't need to have an opinion on everything. It's perfectly reasonable to have no opinion on something that you haven't researched or don't understand.

6. You probably won't be remembered or have a legacy. Don't let that concern you. In a few thousand years, chances are we will all be forgotten.

7. You can tell everything you need to know about a person by observing (1) how they treat workers and (2) whether they tidy up after themselves.

8. You can get pretty damn far in life by just saying what you're going to do and then doing it. No fancy hack needed.

9. Most of us need fewer friends and more intellectual sparring partners. Friends are easy to come by, but intellectual sparring partners question our assumptions and force us to level up.

10. Being kind to people is the only real life hack. Kindness remains severely underrated.

11. Don't worry about how many books people are reading. It's much more impressive to read one book and have it deeply impact you than to read 100 books and not feel a thing.

12. You should never bet against a person who just keeps showing up.

13. Most of the people you look up to and admire are remarkably unremarkable. Their success is not due to some intrinsic difference, but some combination of effort and luck.

14. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

15. You're probably being held back by your unwillingness to ask or your fear of doing something different.

16. Failure doesn't always lead to growth. Sometimes failure just leads to pain. And sometimes the growth doesn't come from the failure, but from simply outlasting the darkness.

17. Waking up early is a great way to improve your life. You don't have to wake up early to be successful, but if you own the morning, you own the day.

18. Hard work is not overrated. 99% of successful people worked very very hard.

19. Showing up early costs very little and pays off handsomely in the long run.

20. The world is not fair. Bad people win and good people lose — it happens all the time. However, whether the world is fair or not, it will always favour those who make the most of what they have before them.