67. What actions you could take to move yourself in the direction of the life you want—where you could search for networking opportunities, what friends in neighboring cities you could visit and explore, how you could get out more.
68. The feeling of sun on your skin.
69. The smell of spring.
70. What you can do with your minutes, as opposed to your hours, or days.
71. How much of your self-perception is built by culture, or expectations, or other people’s opinions.
72. How much of your self-perception is sustained by culture, or expectations, or other people’s opinions.
73. Who you are when nobody’s around.
74. What you thought you’d be when you were younger. How the elements of that play into your life now.
75. How you’d behave differently if this entire time-space reality were in fact a holographic illusion over which you ultimately have control.
76. How you’d behave differently if your fate were dependent on the thoughts you think and the actions you take in any given moment.
77. The basic premise of various ancient philosophies, and which resonates with you the most soundly.
78. Melodies of songs that haven’t been written yet.
79. The fact that the way to change your life is to change the way you think, and the way to change the way you think is to change what you read.
80. What you’d read if you chose books and articles based on what interested you, not what other people say is “good” literature.
81. What you’d listen to if you chose music based on what interested you, not what other people say is “good” music.
82. What genuinely turns you on.
83. What qualities you admire most in other people. (This is what you most like about yourself.)
84. What qualities you most dislike in other people. (This is what you cannot see, or are resisting, in yourself.)
85. How love would save your life, if it were capable of doing such things. (It is.)
86. How infinite the universe is; how infinitesimal we are; how perhaps each is a reflection, and extension, of the other.
87. How complicated the questions are; how simple the answers turn out to be.
88. What “yes” feels like to you. People very often focus on the warning signs that something is wrong, but not the subtle signals that something is right.
89. How many random, chance occurrences were involved in nearly every important advancement in your life.
90. A mantra, or many mantras, all of which work to support your unwavering conviction that the future will be different, and you will figure out how to make it so.
91. The fact that the kind of love worth choosing and keeping is the kind that ever so slightly tilts the axis on which your world spins, leaving nothing to ever be the same again.
92. How to fight better. How to eloquently communicate your thoughts and feelings without putting people on the defensive, and starting an argument where there should just be a deepening of connection.
93. What you’d live for, if your primary interest was no longer your own wants and needs.
94. The people who depend on you, and how absolutely devastated they would be if you were no longer in their lives.
95. Who and where you will be in five years if you carry on as you are right now.
96. The most important things you’ve learned about life so far.
97. How you came to learn the most important things you’ve learned so far.
98. How many people go to bed at night crying, wishing they had what you have—the job, the love, the apartment, the education, the friends, and so on.
99. How many times in your life you went to bed crying, wishing you could have what you have now—the job, the love, the apartment, the education, the friends, and so on.
100. What you can do to more consistently remind yourself of this.
101. What your most fully realized self is like. How your best self thinks. What they are grateful for, who they love. The first, and most important step, to being the person you were intended to be is to conceive of them. Once you’ve accomplished that, everything else falls in line.
14
EXPECTATIONS
YOU MUST
let go of
IN YOUR 20s
