15 Life-Hacking Tools I’d Give to My 21-Year-Old Self
Borrow a few killer ideas for yourself.
I just turned 50 years young, and I thought I’d share some wisdom I wish I had learned far sooner.
These 15 life tools work 100% of the time because they’re from God. I didn’t make them up. I stole them from the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Nietzsche, and others. They’re sometimes called common sense.
Of course, none of these are rules or commands for you to follow, just my reflections from decades of striving and learning.
So grab a coffee or tea and settle in. I hope these tools save you time, energy, and suffering in the years ahead.
Be a loner
Blaise Pascal said, “All of man’s unhappiness comes from his inability to stay peacefully alone in his room.”
Practicing solitude is something most people find challenging. But there is great power in being by yourself for an entire day. When it’s just you, great things can happen. You can self-inquiry and put your life in perspective. This is nearly impossible when other people constantly surround you. So embrace solitude and remember people are sometimes overrated. Many other things are also more essential to life than humans.
Practice acceptance
Acceptance is rooted in Buddhism and is the first step toward change. There’s no proof that this life isn’t already heaven; we’re just messing it up. Taoists, Buddhists, stoics, and classic German philosophers teach us to accept what is.
Friedrich Nietzsche tells us to love our life, no matter what our past, present, or future says. We have to learn to celebrate everything that has happened in our life. The good, the bad, the heartbreak, the failure, the forgotten friendship, the rejection, the pain, the delays, and the lost opportunities are here to improve you. In other words, most of our suffering is derived from not accepting what comes our way.
Find the meaning of life
When you’re asking what’s the meaning of your life, you’re asking the wrong question. The right question is, what purpose you chose for your life? There is no universal meaning to life. You assign that meaning to yourself. You have to find your purpose and gladly own it. Nietzsche suggests becoming an Ubermensch, which translates into Superman from German. An Ubermensch, says Nietzsche, is a superhuman who creates meaning and values without being influenced by anything outside his being. To put it differently, you don’t want to become a pleasure junkie, and you don’t want to borrow the meaning of your life from some global institution, corporation, or politician.
As Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl wrote, “When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”
Travel the world
The way we see the world and life changes when we travel.
Moving purposefully on the surface of this beautiful planet gives you another layer of existence. In other words, it’s not the foreign places on a journey but the traveler who is alien to those places. You must look at traveling as education. Every new land expands your dimensions, and that dimension never retracts to the original size.
And one more thing. A real traveler doesn’t travel to get somewhere; he travels to learn more about himself.
As Lao Tzu says, “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intend on arriving.”
So, find time to travel because you’ll regret it on your deathbed.
Meditate to become free
The big question people ask is: “Why should I meditate?”
If you walked up to a zen master and asked this question, he would reply, “You shouldn’t meditate, and you should leave.” In other words, expecting to get something from the meditation is the problem the meditation is trying to solve.
The Buddha meditated not to get something. He meditated to become free of the need to get something. We live in a world where we’re constantly chasing something exterior. Meditation is about finding happiness within yourself. You’ll never find happiness in any external object. Meditation can free you from your demons and constant wants and desires that keep you spinning on your hamster wheel. Does anybody genuinely want to be depressed all the time? Does anybody want to have 60,000 repetitive thoughts on any given day? Peace is hard to find in this world; meditation can give you a sense of compassion, balance, and wisdom.
Look after your body
Dr. Peter Attia says exercise is the most crucial longevity drug. Your body is the sanctuary of happiness. Make your health a priority by exercising, resting, and getting sunlight. Strength, muscle mass, and cardiorespiratory fitness are critical to a healthy life. It might sound a no-brainer, but most people ignore this scientific fact. Attia proved that having very high cardiorespiratory fitness gives you a five-fold reduction in mortality rate from all causes.
As he puts it, “No one has ever invented an alternative drug that increases your chances of having long, healthy life by a factor of 5.”
Understand money
Money is my favorite writing subject. Whether you like it or not, money rules the world. Think of money as the financial energy that buys you time and things in the future. Don’t ever get mad about millionaires and billionaires getting more wealth. You’ll never stop them anyway. Instead, learn how money is created, invested, and preserved. Realize that living from paycheck to paycheck or storing money in a savings account is a sure way to serfdom. And realize that you’ll never get ahead by holding inflationary fiat money. Instead, learn how money works and accumulate assets like stocks, real estate, or Bitcoin. It works like magic.
As Naval Ravikan said, “Money is a skill you can learn.”
So, learn the skill or enjoy staying poor.
Learn languages
The Roman Emperor Charlemagne once said: “To have another language is to possess a second soul.”
In other words, when you speak another language, you transform into another human being. It’s incredible how much more complex of an individual you are when you add a new language. Ask any polyglots, and they tell you they feel shapeshifting when they speak another language.
Research shows that language can influence our thinking, giving us different perspectives. Languages open new dimensions for you and allow you to connect with many more incredible people outside your boring countries.
But that’s not all. If you speak multiple languages, you’ll improve your memory, problem-solving, critical-thinking skills, enhanced concentration, multitasking, and better listening skills.
Embrace Kaizen
We’re not on this planet to survive. We’re here to thrive. And to thrive, you must constantly challenge yourself and improve your life. Look at most people’s lives. They haven’t changed. They talk the same, live in the same place, work for the same boss, and their ideas are decades old.
There is an ancient Japanese method called “kaizen,” which is a Japanese term meaning “change for the better” or “continuous improvement.” This self-improvement philosophy teaches that life is a game of you versus you. In other words, you should compete with yourself to be 1% better every day and incrementally improve everything you do. If you can master your mind, you can master anything.
If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse. Tattoo it on your neck.
Reading is a true superpower
Charlie Munger, a self-made billionaire, and Warren Buffett’s business partner, said,
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time — none. Zero.”
Become a learning machine. Reading is to your mind what exercise is to the body. To improve your thinking, you must read more. As long as you’re reading, you are already on your way to wisdom.
Times are changing. You need to be able to learn and compound your knowledge.
The famous Goethe wrote, “You only see what you know.”
That is to say, once your mind opens up to new knowledge, your perception channels never return to the original state. You become unstoppable when you have a framework that allows you to absorb, understand, comprehend, and deploy knowledge.
Don’t make assumptions
Best-selling author of Four Agreements, Don Miquel Ruis, says, “Assumptions are nothing more than lies that we are telling ourselves.”
Making assumptions is all about thinking. We overthink, and thinking leads to assumptions. It’s essential to realize the nagging voice in your head is not real. Almost everything this voice tells us is an assumption, and most of our life’s problems are based on this distorted reality.
As Lao Tsu says, “Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
So, if you’re aware of your voice in the head, you don’t make assumptions and can focus on the truth. Then you see life as it is, not how we want it to be.
Question herd mentality
It’s essential to realize that all you are is just a collection of programs implemented to you by the authorities like the education system, family, religion, television, politicians, and corporation. Those programs are not in your best interest.
Friedrich Nietzsche despised such a mentality and distinguished between master and slave morality. According to this concept, those at the top are strong-willed and create values and rules. The rest, the herd, obediently follow but oppose their oppressors simultaneously. However, instead of rising to the top, those with slave morality want others to be at their level. In other words, they want you to be obedient, mediocre, and uniform members of society. They expect you to be just like them. If you stand out, the herd considers you as dangerous. Conformity is a virtue within the herd, and authenticity is a threat. Nietzsche urges us to be neither master nor slave but to transcend the matrix altogether and unapologetically forge our own path.
Overcome failure with one word.
“Next.”
Don’t try.
I stole this tool from famous American poet and writer Charles Bukowski. His tombstone memorializes only two messages, the poet’s name and the concise epitaph, “Don’t Try.” That’s right, Bukowski’s philosophy boiled down to those two words.
What he meant by that is that there should be a balance in everything you do. If your effort is far greater than your outcome, stop and let it go. Life should flow naturally and be an enjoyable and rewarding experience.
Bukowski probably borrowed this philosophy from the ancient teaching of Taoism. One of the most valuable concepts of Taoism is Wu Wei. It refers to accepting the universe’s flow. In other words, it means you should not go against nature nor impose your will on life’s events but simply let them happen.
Memento mori
In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote, “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”
That was his personal reminder to continue living in the present and not wait. We are going to die. Everyone around us is going to die. Such reminders and exercises are all part of Memento mori, the ancient practice of reflection on mortality. It translates to “remember death.”
So, appreciate life, remind yourself just how little time you have, and start living today.
Steve Jobs urged us to ask ourselves one question,” If today were the last day of my life would I want to do what I am about to do today?”
Tomorrow is one of the most dangerous words. Stop living for tomorrow and start living for today.
Final thought
These are essential tools that the wisest people have always intuitively known and lived by.
When you are not aligned with them, you’re probably unhappy. Your life seems like a punishment and constant suffering because you live against the flow.
Use these tools as reminders and let them be the building blocks of living your life to the fullest without wasting a second.
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