30 lessons I learned before turning 30 (Part 3)

This is the last part of my 3-part series titled “30 lessons I learned before turning 30.” If you haven’t checked the first two parts (Links to Part 1 and Part 2), I recommend you do it first since they include the first 20 lessons.

Next to each lesson, I add a small commentary for context and further explanation. The list is not in any particular order.

Without further ado, here is the last part of the list with lessons 21 to 30.

21) Direct experience is king

No amount of theory will surpass your direct experience. If you cannot verify some idea by yourself, throw it away (at least for now). Of course, every method or principle you try should be done for a couple of weeks or months before making a final decision.

I used (and still at a point) to be a self-improvement junkie. That means I consumed many personal development content, books, podcasts, and YouTube videos. Whether walking, eating, or at the gym, I always had some content to consume. But, as you may have also experienced, soon, it becomes too much to absorb and embody. The end result: the ideas become beliefs. You may think you know the concepts and even talk about them with others, but this is primarily mental masturbation.

The main point is that consuming content is the first and easy step for personal growth. Doing the practices and living the ideas in our daily lives is where the challenge starts and where most of us stop. We must give our minds time to process this information. Journaling or contemplating can be great tools that aid in this process.

22) The importance of philosophy

I know this point won’t apply to most of you, but if you are intellectually inclined, go on. To be honest, I disregarded philosophy most of my life. I didn’t know what it was about besides impossible-to-understand jargon and mental masturbation. School didn’t help either. The two years I had philosophy was about reading boring texts and discussing about boring bullshit. At least, that was my point of view back then. Maybe I was just dumb. Who knows.

This lesson came after years of self-improvement and trying to distill the ideas into more general principles. To my surprise, many of those ideas are based on philosophical principles laid down hundreds of years ago. Over time, I became interested in these esoteric ideas instead of the more “mundane” stuff (which still is important).

Now, I’m not encouraging you to become academic or professional philosophers. Instead, I want you to become a better thinker and enquire about the nature of life and reality. To come up with your own answers (see point 17). It’s not about spending hundreds of hours reading Kant and Nietzsche. Rather, it’s about spending the same hours contemplating questions you consider important. It’s about embodying the lessons you learn and grounding your conclusion on direct experience and not speculation or belief. It’s a personal quest for the Truth.

23) Reality is not black or white

In the age of polarization, this principle is as important as ever. Politics is one of the most prominent examples. Things are not always “left” or “right,” but it can be a combination of both in different degrees. If you are a left-winger, not all the right-wingers’ ideas are bullshit, and vice versa. In this cancel and group thinking culture, we seem to have lost the capacity to appreciate other people’s ideas, even if we don’t agree on everything. This has been exacerbated by social media, whose algorithms show you only things you want to see. We end up in different bubbles, totally disconnected from the other bubbles.

We like simple answers, but reality is more complicated and very non-linear. The black-and-white approach can serve as a first step. But if we want to go to the core of any issue, the answer will come up in a shade of grays comprised of multiple perspectives. That’s why it is important to listen to contrasting opinions on different topics and make our best effort to not fall into a particular bubble. Otherwise, we become unable to see other people’s points of view (recall point 12). Soon, everyone who doesn’t think like us is labeled “stupid,” limiting any opportunity to learn and understand.

24) How much do beliefs shape our realities

We humans love to known, or equivalently, hate to not known. We would rather believe that something is true or not. That’s why religions were and still are so popular. However, beliefs do not limit themselves to religious affairs. Quite the contrary.

Most of our worldview is shaped by different beliefs about the world, others, and ourselves. In a sense, we need them for our survival. Otherwise, we would have to try every scientific experiment ourselves, which is impractical.

The problem is not beliefs alone if you know they are constructions of the mind. Instead, most of us take our beliefs too seriously. So much that we confuse them with true knowledge! And that’s where beliefs become dangerous because they limit our sense of reality and hinder our growth.

Beliefs are so important that I made a dedicated post. It deals with the mechanics of beliefs and how to identify and remove those that are not serving you anymore.

25) Life is a video game

I spent thousands of hours playing video games since I was a kid. My favorite genre is strategy games. I love that shit. But this robbed me of the energy to apply this strategic thinking to my daily life. On the other hand, when we spend time playing video games, our lives seem dull and unappealing. In a sense, we become dependent and want to escape from our mediocre lives.

What if you become the avatar of this game called Life? Yeah, it will suck at first. You are starting at level 0 or 1 if you are lucky. But that’s where the progress is the easiest (after all, you are starting at ground 0). If you also love strategy games, why don’t you use this mental power to improve your life?

I still have fond memories of the time spent playing games. The Mass Effect saga will always have a place in my heart. Some people can play games without getting obsessed, but I have a hard time with that, and I know many guys struggle with video game addictions. Until I don’t have my shit together, I think it’s a safe idea to stay away from them and instead try to improve my character.

26) Every perspective has some degree of truth (even the ones you may disagree with)

This lesson is related to point 23. I think that it’s a serious mistake to ignore other people’s opinions just because we may disagree on some aspect. For example, I may not share the political views of someone, but this doesn’t allow me to appreciate their philosophy.

I love connecting the dots from many different points of view. As such, I need to collect lots of data from different schools of thought and my ideas to develop my unique perspective on the world. After all, our perspectives are severely limited by our culture and life story. As a consequence, it will always produce limited ideas.

I try to sporadically read or listen to people with ideas I may consider “crazy” or completely “wrong.” I know that understanding their perspective can help me understand why they are coming up with such ideas in the first place. Also, it helps me to collect information I may be missing to get the whole picture. It doesn’t mean I will agree with them, but at least I should be open to the possibility of changing my mind 180 degrees and be OK with that.

27) Every change occurs when it has to occur

In other words, don’t try too hard to change something if it doesn’t come naturally. Sometimes, it’s just not the right time. In a sense, life gives us many opportunities to change course in our direction.

I can think of the many times I tried to remove some bad habit of my life when I wasn’t ready to do it. Sometimes, we don’t want to change, but someone else tells us to do it (a friend, family member, or favorite YouTuber). You may ask, when do I know I’m ready to change? For me, there is a clear, irrevocable conviction to change whatever I want to do. There is zero doubt. This doesn’t mean the change will be effortless and painless. Some self-discipline certainly will be helpful to go through the first phase, which typically sucks.

In any case, if you fail, don’t beat yourself up too much, and gather lessons you can use next time you come up with the same challenge. Sooner or later, it will come again, and you must be prepared for it.

28) Failure is not optional, but necessary

I already mentioned failure in a couple of points. For some reason, we are terrified of failing. Personally, I always dreaded it. I was a good student at school, and my identity was tied to it. As a consequence, I always did my best to get a good grade. Nothing wrong with that, but it creates a lot of pressure. I remember reading the assigned books for school several times to the point of memorizing the whole thing!

I think the school system has a big responsibility in our fear of failing. After all, failing means a bad grade, which means our parents will be disappointed, or later, we won’t have good enough grades to get into university.

In real life, though, there is no answer key. So many times, we have to figure out the solution by ourselves. As such, we will make many mistakes. But if we fear failing, we will get stuck in whatever we are right now without a chance of improving our current situation. Of course, we can take shortcuts by learning from other people’s mistakes. But there are situations where theoretical knowledge won’t be enough (point 21), and we must go through the challenges ourselves.

I made a special post about failure since I think it’s a crucial lesson to embody to reach our full potential.

29) Don’t care much about what others may think of you

I used to care too much about other people’s opinions. I don’t know why, but I took things personally (point 10). As a result, I avoided confrontation and expressing my views at all costs. Maybe it was a self-esteem issue, I don’t know, really. Thinking deeply about it, I realized it all boils down to fear (see point 13). I was afraid of saying something silly or that my image was ruined. Now, it seems foolish to me, but back then, it was serious business.

Other people have their own agendas and biases, so they will project those onto you. It doesn’t mean we will dismiss their opinions. We will take them as data that we may use to make our decisions in life. Ultimately, we are the architects of our lives (point 6), and it’s up to us to make the best of our lives.

Don’t confuse this with close-mindedness, stubbornness, or with being an asshole.

30) I still have tons of lesson to learn

The more I learn, the more I need to know. In a sense, I feel that this journey is just starting, which is pretty exciting! Don’t make the impression that I’ve mastered the previous 29 lessons or know everything, far from it. We are all here trying to grow in some way or another. As I mentioned at the beginning, I wanted to use this exercise as an opportunity for reflection and to gather some lessons that could be useful to some of you. Some of them won’t make sense to you. That’s totally fine. Take anything that you may find of value, and leave the rest.

I’m pretty sure my present self will look quite stupid compared to my 35-year-old self, but that’s the idea of the game: to be in constant evolution. New lessons unlock new challenges, and failures give us feedback on how to do things better in the future. The important thing is to not stop! It’s easy to get caught in petty problems that make us stuck in life. As soon as we move, we get closer to the goal.

Which lessons did you like the most? Feel free to leave a comment!

I talk in more detail about this topic in the video below. If you liked this article, subscribe to my newsletter to get access to free self-improvement principles every week.