[lifehacking] Friday night words to a young man — 5 lessons I wish I knew last year.

While TGIF, everyone (me included usually) is going out, today I tried not to and instead look back a bit at what I have learned this year. So here it is : I wish I learned this earlier so I wanted to share this bit of “expensive wisdom” to my peers. Hopefully a lot more lessons coming, and a lot less mistakes done for all of us, humans.

1)You will soon be dead.

Don’t panic. But do what is needed to help people around you achieve things you will be remembered for. Build your legacy. Seeking happiness is cool, but no one is remembered for internal personal “happiness”. Seek for legacy, as memory of you in the global village is this the only thing that will remain once your “not-that-young” body let you down.

Being alive but not being aware of this is like being dead. To not be dead : put things in motion. Always remember that 2 years from now you could be in the exact same house, doing the exact same thing : being like dead. Realize this, put things in motion and make things move inside you and around you. This is what is life : the more you make things move around you, the more you live. Don’t forget that.

2)Have a fucking plan:

Many people drive all their life on auto pilot. It’s “easy, fun, cool”. If you don’t drive your plane, other people around you drive the plan for you and you are their slave. Don’t forget that. Enjoying the journey, taking the time for stops in nice places : You don’t need to follow your plan exactly, but at least you will need a plan if you want to be the driver of your plane, your life. Consider celebrating every stops, making memorable moves in places you discover, celebrate every micro achievements you will goal to yourself. Most of all, “Gong it” so hard every time you achieve a micro step that you will really really want to achieve another micro step. If you can celebrate with people around you, people will also take the habit on helping you achieving your micro steps. If you can make this your focus of a day, a week, of a month : you will accelerate the pace of your micro achievements to a point where you will become “high achiever” and more people will try to associate themselves to you to achieve more with you.

3)Teach rare informations.

People remember actions and who taught them how to act. The easiest way to help others and be remembered is to teach someone next to you something, a skill, or an information that could change his life. Information is the cheapest thing in the world but also the most expensive one. People kill for informations sometimes. Teaching is the best way to keep yourself learning informations no one else around you have. And lifelong learning is the only thing that differ you and a stone. Don’t forget this : teach people, and keep learning new stuff that other don’t know so you can teach more and be a bit more interesting to talk to.

4)Find ways to Exercise for fun

If you don’t die soon, you will carry this body for maybe hundred years. It’s depressing to have a shitty body at 70 years old and carry it for 30 more years. That’s why most of the people give up at 85 ish. Take care of your body. Drinking water instead of highly sugared orange juice is a way to take care of your body. Maybe you don’t need to go to the gym and stuck yourself in a weightlifting jail 3 hours/week. Jogging sometimes can be totally useless as well if no better diet. Be creative about taking care of your body. Having protected sex, eating measurably sugar, taking daily walks in the park to release stress & maybe encountering people to play new sports activities with can keep you away from becoming fat & heart attacks.

5)Your brain can be a suburb garden, or a primordial forest.

You want to seed it with low grass? stupid potatoes? ambitious sequoias? - doesn’t matter: Take care of your brain, train it, seed it, farm it, training your mental calculus with your new iPhone app. And remember alcohol is a drug. Unless you really want to kill yourself and want to take anti-depressors because all your family died last week: avoid drugs. Drugs are like cheating neuro-transmitters of your brain: you take the dose of dopamine for the whole week in 1 shot, that’s cool: But you will miss this dose the next 7 days and feel really depressed, looking for more doses and spending your time and money stupidly trying to get your dose of happiness. Instead : Meditate. Meditation is your winning way to realize why you should be or not be happy about things and let it go with a clear plan. Mediation reduces stress and stress being the highest driver of lifespan reduction, you want to do more mediation and take care of your brain daily.

6)About boredom.

Maybe many times during the day, you will be caught in this situation where you don’t really know what you want. At this time, be very careful. You will be dragged by deathly entertainments. Facebook, YouTube, Netflix will vacuum 20 minutes, 1h or maybe 2 hours of your precious limited life. Partying or socializing with your friends is cool entertainment but if it include several bottles of alcohol, realize you will probably loose lot of money and also 20hours of idleness hangover not doing something great of your short life. Don’t let it happen and if you don’t feel against it, force yourself to do either 1,2,3 instead of entertainment. You can always teach someone something or take care of your body within 20 minutes. Now go and fucking live what is remaining of your life properly.

Good luck, and thank you for indulging me.