5 reminders I needed this week

Hey friend,

I keep an on-going note on my phone where anytime I read or hear a line worth keeping, I jot it down in there. Over the last year, this has accumulated into an extensive list.

This week I've been in a bit of a funk and needed to reset. So I scrolled back through these for some reorientation.

Here are the 5 that spoke to me the most.

1. Life is not about becoming someone else. It's about unbecoming everything you're not so the real you can finally breathe.

I used to think growth meant adding something, a new version of me stacked on top of the old one. But it's the reverse. It's the peeling off of what was never mine to begin with, the expectations and roles and opinions I picked up along the way. What's underneath was always there.

Who were you before the world told you who you are?

2. You can either be liked by everyone or respected by the right ones.

And the respect that matters most is your own. Chase being liked by everyone and you spend your life performing for people who don't actually know the real you. And it's hard to respect yourself when you keep bending into whoever the room wants you to be.

I'd rather be respected by a few for who I am than be liked by a crowd for who I'm not.

3. Failure is tuition for mastery.

Failure filters you toward the thing you're actually after. Every failure teaches you something a win can't. It shows you the current approach doesn't work, so you cross it off, adjust, and move on. Each one you rule out puts you a step closer to the one that does.

4. If you fail to sacrifice for what you care about, what you care about will be the sacrifice.

I gave this one a whole email a couple weeks back, but it's good enough to reiterate.

Everything you care about costs something to keep, and that cost is the sacrifice. And when you won't make that sacrifice, the thing you cared about becomes the sacrifice instead. So you're giving something up either way: a little comfort now, or the thing you said that matters.

Take your health. I'd rather put in the effort at the gym now than end up in a nursing home later, because the body you won't sacrifice for now is the one you end up sacrificing later.

5. It may not be your fault, but it is yours to overcome.

I've come to realize it doesn't matter much whose fault it is. What matters is what you do next. There is no power in blame. But there is power in taking responsibility to make your situation better. It may not be your fault that you ended up here, but it is your fault if you stay.

None of these are mine. I just keep them around for weeks like this one, when I need reminded which way is up.

And if you needed to hear one of these as much as I did, I'm glad it found you. Cause life can be hard, man. Even when everything is good.

So if you're in a funk or feeling the weight of the world pressing down on you, you can always hit reply. It's just me back here, not a system, and I'm glad to listen.

Until next time,

Peter