20 (Brutally) Honest Points for a Better 2020

I wrote this at the start of the year, but left it as a draft. I think I have followed most points, how about you?

As much as possible, I would like to live an honest 2020. However, I feel I cannot do this without getting these 20 points off my chest.

1. Your mental health is not something completely out of your control. You can both regulate and deregulate your your mental well-being with lifestyle choices.

2. Choosing not to have a hangover every day is considered a good lifestyle choice.

3. Most people feel insecure about at least two or three aspects of their life. Some people are just better at managing them.

4. One of your life goals should be to work on your own insecurities so that other people don’t have to continually put up with them.

5. Learn to better identify the toxic people in your life. Once identified, tip toe away quietly, then run until you can insert a level of distance that prevents you from seeing them, hearing them, and hopefully hearing of them.

6. A relationship that ends on an honest note, is better than one that continues as a lie.

5. Don’t expect to have many meaningful conversations if you never read. A lot of people these days have never finished a book. Go figure.

6. Overprotected children will suffer greatly in the long term. Don’t shield them from reality forever. Reality wins (roughly 100% of the time).

7. YOU ARE WHAT YOU DO. So if you binge-watch stupid shit on YouTube all weekend, guess what, you will feel like a stupid piece of shit all weekend. (YouTube also has great content - I am not knocking it completely)

8. One of the saddest things to see is a truly gifted person that wasted their talents and now forever procrastinates by treading water in a dismal sea of their own self inflicted nihilism.

9. The second saddest thing to see is a man child that never graduated from adolescence and instead whines about how the world hasn’t conformed to their naive and underdeveloped worldview. It’s not good for you to continue as Peterpan, people won’t respect you or invite you to things.

10. Try and get a hold of your ego, otherwise people may mistake it for your personality. Then again, maybe it is your personality, in which case, you may need help. See below.

11. If you have been suffering from a mental illness (such as an out of control ego) and don’t have the necessary mental faculties to self-manage, you should seriously consider therapy.

12. Alcohol, drugs, shopping and food are not therapy.

13. Shopping therapy is used as an excuse to provide temporary value fulfillment. The positive emotion such an activity imparts lasts about as long as sand castles built during high tide. In other words, not very.

13. Our collective destiny is fixed - we are all going to die. However, everything that happens between now and your death bed is up for grabs. So while you wait, why not manifest a fun and challenging life to pass the time? Cos seriously WHAT ELSE ARE YOU GOING TO DO?

14. If you aren’t trying to solve a problem in the world then how can you justify the need to have your opinion heard?

15. If you can’t have an honest conversation with your spouse/partner/best friend/parents then your relationship is at least in part, an illusion. Speaking the truth will either turn this illusion into something more real or it will destroy it. If it ends, don’t feel bad. The relationship was false anyway and probably wasn’t serving your best interests.

17. Unless you live in a cave and only eat soil, you are at risk of contradicting yourself every time you complain about capitalism and consumerism. First, and whether you like it or not, you must accept that you are the beneficiary of these systems, then you may have your 2 cents. If you really believe in communism, please make plans to move North Korea, I’m sure they’d gladly accept another slave.

18. People that espouse half baked solutions to complex geo-political issues but have yet to rectify the petty squabbles between their friends/family members/co-workers, probably shouldn’t have opinions about complex geo-political issues.

19. Pay attention to your levels of boredom. Chronic boredom may indicate that you are not being sufficiently challenged in life or not engaged in enough meaningful pursuits.

20. Your usefulness correlates to how many problems you can fix. Your uselessness correlates to how many problems you bring to situations (that are otherwise working fine without your presence.)