21 Things I've Learned in 21 Years
1. Promptness shows respect.
2. You can’t avoid offending people from time to time. When you don’t mean it, apologize. When you do mean it, accept the consequences.
3. Physical attraction is nice, but shared values and a shared sense of humor are the real keys to lasting love.
4. The most valuable thing to have is a good reputation, and it’s neither hard nor expensive to acquire one: Be fair. Be honest. Be trustworthy. Be generous. Respect others.
5. Cough syrup doesn’t work.
6. Keeping perspective is the greatest key to happiness. From a distance, even a bumpy road looks smooth.
7. It’s 10 times easier to fall in love than to stay in love. And no matter what the sad songs say about romance, broken hearts do mend.
8. It’s never a shame when you admit you don’t know something, and often a shame when you assume that you do.
9. Wounds heal faster under bandages than they do in the open air.
10. Fear of failure is a ticket to mediocrity. If you’re not failing from time to time, you’re not pushing yourself. And if you’re not pushing yourself, you’re coasting.
11. Grudges are poison. The only antidote is to let them go.
12. If you’re in a conversation and you’re not asking questions, then it’s not a conversation, it’s a monologue.
13. When something that costs less than $200 breaks and it’s not under warranty and you can’t fix it yourself in half an hour, it’s almost certainly more cost-effective to throw it out.
14. Candor is overrated. It’s hard to unsay what you’ve said in anger and almost impossible to take back what you’ve written.
15. All the stuff you have lying around that you’ll never want, need, wear or look at again? It just makes it harder to find what you do want, need or intend to wear. File it, donate it or throw it out.
16. When you mess up, ’fess up. It’s the fastest way, if there is one, to forgiveness.
17. When you’re not the worst-dressed person at a social event, you have nothing to worry about.
18. Be truthful or be quiet. Lies are hard to keep track of.
19. Almost no one stretches, flosses or gives compliments often enough.
20.Don’t waste your breath proclaiming what’s really important to you. How you spend your time says it all.
21. Whatever your passion, pursue it as though your days were numbered. Because they are.