4 Life Lessons at 21

Preface

I’ve put off writing an article like this for some time now as I’ve always thought to myself: “Who am I to give life advice to anyone?” Now that I’m close to graduating however, and have lived 3 years of independent adult life, I feel like I finally have enough experience to write about and give advice to whomever may find this post and feels like they need it. I’m not proclaiming to be some self help guru of any sort, nor am I saying everyone should heed my advice and take it as fact, but to those who can relate to my problems and circumstance the following article may be useful, whether that may be in the far or immediate future.

First let us understand the nature of beliefs and our own perception of the world. Here I will use an analogy the new generation might be more familiar with — Tiktok. Our brains are analogous to the algorithm tiktok uses to serve us engaging content: Tiktok takes in data about the user such as watch time, content labels, comment engagement, likes, etc, and builds a understanding (regression model) about each individual user. Using this model they can personalize engaging content specific to what each user would be most likely to keep watching.

Similarly our brains take in data points about the world and builds a model in which it predicts how the world works, which is specific to each individual person. This might sound obvious to some but dear reader you have to realise that many people in my field of computer science fail to understand this, i.e. they cannot even fathom the world from another’s perspective. However, I don’t blame them. Many if not most assume a materialistic world where internal states such as consciousness do not exist, or that there is no eternal law, therefore assuming that one’s point of view can be inferred only from circumstance, situations, and facts. However, the more prevailing factor in how individuals perceive the world and more specifically new pieces of data, or more simply “things that happen to them” depends more on their built up worldview, which is the concept I mentioned earlier analogous to the trained TikTok algorithm.

Now you might be asking: “Why do I need to know this?” and to me the answer is quite simple. Understanding this fact will allow you understand yourself more and more powerfully can allow you to change core parts of yourself. These core values and beliefs are all learned and nurtured through our childhood up to our present selves, so therefore if you wish to change and grow as a person this information might be beneficial to understand.

If you have read up until this point and not already clicked off, and still disagree with me, by all means do. After all, this is just a showing of my own worldview, values, and beliefs too. What I will begin to describe in the next section is also a projection of my worldview and beliefs, which I have deemed useful to me and to others as well, and have made me who I am and got me here today.

 

4 Life Lessons at 21

Growth

One of my earliest tenets of life I learned came to me when I was in 3th grade. I didn’t always do well in class, I sucked at every language that was taught to me at school, but I was never the worst student either. At this point in my life even though I didn’t explicitly think about it, I could infer my place in “society”, which at the time meant grades in regards to my small class of 15. I saw a gap between me and the smartest, but also a gap between me and the worst in the class. How does one move up in the ranking? The answer was simple: try a little harder. And in my case it worked. By 6th grade I was one of the best in the class, but most importantly not the best. You see on the day we got our math final grades back, I saw that I had gotten an A, but there were a few others in my class that got A+. It was then that I realised that this “grind” or climb towards the top, while effective, meant that if I always had my eyes on the top, regardless of where I was at, it would never be enough. Looking down at the metaphorical mountain of grades I had just climbed up, I felt no accomplishment either. Sure I had beaten my friends’ grades, but was there ever a competition to begin with? Dear reader if you are sharp and understood the concept from before, you will recognise that because of my own perception that grades were a success metric and that the target was number 1, I had failed. However if I actually were to objectively look at what I had accomplished, somehow I felt a lot better about myself. I had learned humility along with a growth mindset.

Now for a gaming analogy. In the path of self improvement, these two stats could be said to be the most OP, or best in slot, for this strategy. A growth mindset means accepting failure and a willingness to change, grow, and learn, even when we go down a wrong path. Humility means in spite of our accomplishments, we don’t grow complacent or stagnate in our own pride for too long. Adopting these two stats as the very core of our foundation transforms us into a growth-oriented person, which while slow to start and hurts in the short term, will pay insane dividends in the long term. No need to read atomic habits for this. This framework has served me well throughout my life, from receiving scholarships, to improving at social skills, to miscellaneous skills such as piano or getting fit in the gym.

 

Resilience

Now I want to share something that some of my closest friends don’t even know about, which is my relationship with a silly guy called depression. We don’t have to go into much detail about it, but it’s not like I could even if I tried because a thing with depression is that you tend to forget a lot of things, it is just the nature of the brain shutting down and dissociating to protect itself. However I still remember the two main reasons that triggered it during my teenage years—my parent’s brief divorce and a 2.5 hr commute. There are some studies that show that any commute longer than 1 hour is going to have a major effect on one’s life satisfaction, but I had no option back then but to take the long ass school bus home so I put up with it. This had the side effect of giving me way too much time to think, and then think, and then think some more, which obviously was overthinking, which then led to rumination and eventually depression. I still remember many days at school where I was so depressed and dissociated that things just kinda happened to me like I was an NPC. What finally got me out of it was simply a conversation with my parents after they got back together about how unhappy I was with the commute, and they were supportive of me trying alternative methods such as maybe moving closer or taking alternative transport options. I was still a young and scared boy at this point without much confidence, so the only solution of taking the taxi home everyday instead was way outside of my comfort zone. However I couldn’t take it any longer and said goodbye to the people on the bus and went home independently without any supervision. And at first it was scary, thoughts of kidnappings or scams were always present in my mind, but after a while I kind of got the flow and it was normal to me. This singlehandedly cut my commute time from 2.5 hrs to 40 minutes, and boosted my confidence to decide for myself and act independently from others. This decision of taking it into my own hands was perhaps one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life. As it sent my life on an upwards trajectory. Less time on the bus meant less time thinking meant more meaningful free time available at home meant greater life satisfaction and more control over my own life. Could I have come to this decision earlier with the help of a therapist? Probably, but in the end it was my own fear that was holding me back from action, which I had to overcome on my own.

The question now becomes, “How does this relate at all to the title above of resilience?” And the answer is simple. Once you know that you can overcome obstacles and bounce back, in my case from the worst depressive episode of my life so far, you gain this sense of self belief that no matter what life will throw at you, you have navigated it before, you have been through worse, and even if it is worse, you will make it out alive. One guiding principle I have to supplement this belief is the model of dopamine homeostasis, which describes how our brains will return to a baseline of happiness in any given situation, regardless of circumstance, whether you’re rich, poor, healthy, sick, alive, or in the most extreme example, in a concentration camp, humans have always persevered through our mental resilience and to come out stronger. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

 

Rizz

Ever since I was young I sort of had this aura around me where for some reason people were almost always nice to me. I figured it had to with Thai culture and hospitality, where we’re generally pretty friendly towards everyone. However I started noticing something as I got older, people were sometimes talking behind my back, but it wasn’t gossip or drama, it was praise. I’ve heard many second hand accounts of my own friends talking positively about me to others, whether that be their own parents or other friends. It was strange to me. What did I ever really do to deserve all this praise? As I got older and read more books and took more psychology courses I started to understand it. It was simply my aura. This might sound funny to some but I assure you it is true. Wherever I went where people were somewhat familiar with me, I sort of commanded some respect, which means that at school I was usually the group leader or the one my classmates turned to when they needed help with something, whether that be academic or social. The funny thing is that I sort of unintentionally gained this attribute simply by abiding by these values since I was a kid. The attribute you might have guessed is of course charisma. Even though I didn’t know it at the time, some of the values I was brought up on, along with my personality combined and created a natural charisma in me. The values I am talking about here are the basis for charisma you’ll find in every literature—honesty, authenticity, confidence, optimism, and warmth. Honesty—you live a life where you try as best as possible to represent the truth to others. Authenticity—you live a life where you don’t lie to yourself and others who you truly are. Confidence—you are not scared to express yourself and do the things you believe in. Optimism—you are positive about things, especially the future. Lastly warmth—you are empathetic to others and actively listen.

Now while you could say that these traits are good if you want to be charismatic and able to easily charm others, I would say, don’t treat others just as a means, but as ends in themselves. What I mean is that understanding this could be used for nefarious manipulative purposes, but I will offer you a different perspective on why being charismatic is also good for yourself. Studies have shown that when you live true to who you are and are more aligned with your inner core values and goals, you will live a more satisfying life. This starts with being authentic and confident in yourself. Think for yourself. Who are you really? Why do you care about the things you care for? Then live the life that is most aligned with your true self. This is authenticity. Confidence will naturally follow. Honesty and warmth both need a little more work, you have to be vulnerable at times, not afraid to be seen as weak or weird. When you can do that you’ll realise how others are waiting to open up as well, they’re just waiting for their chance. When they do open up, listen and talk about it, don’t just wait for your turn to speak about yourself. Be genuinely interested in other people. If you aren’t or don’t care you probably shouldn’t be around them, and find people who you genuinely vibe with. Do this and people who actually fuck with you will naturally gravitate towards you, and those who stray away you will know that they don’t actually vibe with the real you.

 

Efficiency

One habit I developed when I was young was that I would always speedrun any chores or homework whenever I had them, and take the rest of the day off. Some people might call this lazy, I call it efficiency. This is practically the age old adage of “Work smarter not harder” and I would like to explain it to how it has helped and shaped me. The core tenet I wrote down as a kid was “Efficiency Efficiency Efficiency”, which in hindsight is ironic and funny how I didn’t instead write “Efficiency x3” or something similar, but basically this amounts to the fact that as human beings we have finite resources, whether that be time or money, and how we best spend that resource can determine life outcomes. What if instead slacking and slowly doing the homework in an hour you focused and finished it in half the time? You would gain 30 minutes of time to do whatever you wanted. Now what you choose to do with the extra time isn’t the point, it is the choice and the free will to choose in the first place that is powerful. This concept mirrors that of saving money—you can spend it now and get something or save it as the potential to get many things, and the potential to get many things is of course way more powerful. Therefore being efficient in your work saves you more time which allows you to do more things, which will propel your life in exponential gains over time.

 

What does it all mean?

If you have read up until this point I will seriously congratulate you. You have just learnt what I regard as my core tenets and values that have seriously benefitted me throughout my life in one article. I suspect that those who actually need the advice I have just given will either stopped reading way before this point or fail to understand many of the points I have just listed, however this is only natural. I think it is wildly optimistic that years of understanding of life can be condensed then transmitted through just a single article covering wildly different aspects of life, but to those who stumble across this at the right moment at the right time in their life, I hope this knowledge can of use whether that be just the spark that lights the ember that leads to long term understanding, or that it is what actually creates concrete action.