1. Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires.
2. Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out is not only impossible, but destructive: attempting to tear it out unravels everything else with it. In contrast, if you’re able to not give a f*ck about the pain, you become unstoppable.
3. You and everyone you know are going to be dead soon. And in the short amount of time between here and there, you have a limited amount of fucks to give. And if you go around giving a f*ck about everything and everyone —well, then you’re going to get f*cked.�
4. Travel is a fantastic self-development tool, because it extricates you from the values of your culture and shows you that another society can live with entirely different values and still function and not hate themselves.
5. The desire for a more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.
6. Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a f*ck about what’s truly f*ckworthy.
7. To be happy we need something to solve. Happiness is therefore a form of action.
8. Being wrong opens us up to the possibility of change. Being wrong brings the opportunity for growth.
9. Unhealthy love is based on two people trying to escape their problems through their emotions for each other—in other words, they’re using each other as an escape. Healthy love is based on two people acknowledging and addressing their own problems with each other’s support.
10. This is the most simple and basic component of life: our struggles determine our successes.
11. The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it.
12. Don’t just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow.
