5 Rules I’m Going To Live By In My 20s

Your 20s are a weird time.

You have so many paths you could go down, you question whether or not you’re doing the right thing, you look around and feel like you’re not where you should be.

It’s a weird time and I just turned 23, but honestly, I would imagine your 30’s, 40’s and even 50’s are likely similar.

So to help me stick on the right path, and do what’s right for me so that I can live a fulfilled and successful life, I made these 5 rules that I’m going to live by for the rest of my life.

Rule 1: Voluntarily Shoulder Responsibility

A lot of life isn’t in your control, in fact, the only thing you can control is what you do, but that doesn’t mean that what you do is of little importance, it means it’s of the most importance.

But as much as a lot of life is uncontrollable, the outcomes in your life and your position in life are largely dictated by you and your actions.

So I made rule 1 to voluntarily shoulder the responsibility of my life - of what has happened, is happening, and will happen.

Because if you don’t, if you don’t take responsibility, you shift the power.

If you say a certain situation is not your responsibility then it’s not yours to change and you can’t do anything to improve upon it.

But if you take on that responsibility, no matter how little influence you had in the initial outcome of the situation, you now have the opportunity to improve. You open the doors for progress.

Because taking responsibility for your life is taking control of your damn life.

2 of the best ways to start taking responsibility are to set a direction you want to go in and then do the work that you know you need to do to get there.

If you dont ever set the direction you want to go in, you’re letting yourself go through life with no purpose or with no aim, you’re not taking control of where you go and therefore you’re not taking responsibility for your life, but if you do set this direction, it’s then your responsibility to do what you need to do to get there.

It’s up to you to do the work, it’s up to you to make the sacrifices, it’s up to you to do whatever it takes because nobody else can do the damn work for you and if you wait for them to do it, if you give up the responsibility of rising to the level that’s required of you to achieve your goals, then you give up the chance of you actually achieving those goals - you give up the control of your life.

You see, goals act as filters.

When you take on the responsibility of setting a goal for your life, you create a filter that allows you to judge whether your actions will benefit you based on how they move you either away or toward your goals, you create something that gives you control over where you end up in life because if you listen to the filter of your goals, you will take all the right actions to end up at your goal.

But if you never voluntarily shoulder responsibility, and decide to take control of your damn life, you’ll never set these goals and you’ll never do the work that you know you need to do to get there, to improve your life and your circumstances, and you’ll stay stuck where you are.

By setting this as a rule for my life, I’ve given myself the opportunity to take control of where I end up, it’s not up to the universe, it’s not up to anybody else.

I’ve taken responsibility and therefore every ounce of improvement in every situation and in response to every uncontrollable factor is up to me.

By voluntarily shouldering responsibility, you take control of your life and where you end up.

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Rule 2: Always Do Something 

No matter who you are, what you’re doing, or what you’re chasing, you will have good days and you will have bad days.

There will be days you jump out of bed ready to work and you get everything done, you’re in a great mood and everything is easy - now, depending on your lifestyle, your habits, your goals, and your mindset, these days might be 99% of the time

But there will always be days where your bed is extra warm, where you struggle to focus, where getting to the gym is the last thing you want to do and everything seems a bit grey.

These days are inevitable and they’re to some degree necessary as they make you appreciate the good days, however, a massive mistake people make is that on these bad days, when they don’t feel like doing anything, they listen to their feelings.

They do nothing.

Which sounds innocent, but it’s not.

If you follow rule 1 and you voluntarily shoulder responsibility, you take on the responsibility of rising to the level required of you to achieve your goals and to do the damn work that you know you need to do.

By doing nothing on the days you feel like doing nothing, you ignore this responsibility and you instantly ruin your self-respect.

You’ve failed to do what you know you need to do.

With lower self-respect, you’re more likely to perform mindless, negative habits, less likely to do the work in the future and you create a negative downward spiral.

And eventually, you’ll be grabbed by the neck and pulled down into a pit of anxiety and guilt that you, yourself, dug.

All because you listened to your feelings.

You see, your emotions are designed to keep you safe, they’re designed to keep you in comfort, they’re not designed to push you to your edge and chase progress.

I’m not saying to never listen to your emotions, but in the context of work and chasing goals and doing the thing you know you need to do, you need to be careful, because they will drag you down and hold you where you are if you let them.

But I’m also not saying that if you’re having a shit day, you need to go 100%, all out, all the time (however in my experience, I always feel better after doing the thing that I need to do and I never feel better after I avoid it, so going all out, all the time might not be a bad idea). What I’m really saying here is that you always need to do something.

If you’re doing the work and chasing your goals and scoring off every task on your to-do list for 2 weeks straight the amount of momentum and compounding you have is insane and if one day you wake up and you don’t feel like working and you choose to listen to your damn feelings, which are designed to keep you comfortable, you lose all that momentum and compounding.

Maybe that day where you don’t feel like working is you on your edge and you’ve never been there before because you listen to your feelings every single time and so you never grow, because when you get to your edge, where progress happens, your body tries to get you to shy away from it and you listen. Maybe you not wanting to do the work is a damn test.

But even if you just do 1 thing, no matter how small it is, you’ll keep your momentum, you’ll keep your compounding, and most importantly, you’ll keep your self-respect.

Your emotions aren’t designed to improve you, they’re designed to keep you alive - and since we’re no longer worried about survival, in terms of doing the work, chasing goals, and doing the thing you know you need to do they can often misfire and lead us down paths of distraction, comfort, and mediocrity.

So I made rule 2 to be: never do nothing, and instead, always do something.

Rule 3: Choose Your Suffering Wisely 

Suffering is an unavoidable part of life.

You will always face suffering - whether it’s something tragic or something minuscule, suffering is unavoidable.

But what most people don’t realise is that you can, for the most part, choose your suffering.

And with that, you have 2 options;

1. You do the easy thing now and suffer later

2. You do the hard thing now and thrive later

Since most people don’t realise this, they choose suffering which is mindless and useless, because they don’t realise that what they’re choosing will cause suffering. They choose to suffer through distraction, vices and bad habits that feel good now but cause suffering later - the likes of alcohol, drugs, social media addictions - instead of choosing to suffer purposefully with big goals, meaningful work, and sacrifices.

Which option you choose will massively dictate the life you live.

If you choose to do the easy thing now, you’ll live a life of no progress or fulfillment.

If you choose to suffer now, you’ll live full of progress and fulfillment.

You can’t avoid this choice.

At every moment, you’re making it. You’re either choosing to workout or to lie on the couch, you’re either choosing to get up early or lie in bed and scroll TikTok.

I made this a rule for my life because suffering is inescapable and if you try to escape it you will end up suffering mindlessly for no purpose and going down the wrong path.

Of course, suffering exists on a scale.

Some suffering can be horrendous and terrifying but these types of suffering are largely uncontrollable facts of life.

The vast majority of your suffering will be found in the decisions you make.

With each decision you make, there’s a trade-off.

You choose one thing over another.

You choose to eat junk food at the sacrifice and suffering of your health and energy.

You choose to suffer working out at the sacrifice of lying on the couch or sleeping in.

If you choose to suffer purposefully, with big goals, meaningful work, sacrifices and doing the thing you know you need to do, you will thrive later, you will move in the right direction, you will move forward toward your goals, you’ll feel proud of yourself and you’ll live a life of fulfillment and progress.

But it requires you to choose your suffering wisely.

Rule 4: Set Your Sights 

Humans are goal orientated creatures, we’re always looking for the next goal, the next objective, over both the micro (right now) and the macro (over years).

There seems to be a movement recently against goals, about focusing on the process, and I agree with the premise but the majority of people have misunderstood it.

The idea of “focus on the process, not the goal” isn’t telling you not to set goals, because you will always have goals, you will always be setting goals. If you don’t consciously choose a goal, if you don’t consciously set your sights, you will mindlessly set your damn sights.

And anything mindless is going to take you down the path of least resistance, the path of cheap pleasure and vices.

If you never consciously set your damn sights, you will never have a reason to take the harder path and avoid those habits that could ruin your life.

Plus, since you’re always going to have goals, you may as well figure out what the heck it is you want in this one life you have and go after it with everything you’ve got, because why the heck not?

Goals also act as filters for your behaviours.

If your goal is a truly meaningful goal that you actually want to achieve, it’ll change the perception of which you view everything.

Everything now becomes about how you can move toward your goals.

Does this activity help you or hinder you?

Does this piece of information help or hinder you?

This allows you to stay on the right track and if your goal is a real goal, ie. it’s something you don’t already have and can’t just get right now, you have to improve as a person to achieve it, then that right path that will allow you to achieve your goal is a path that will lead you to your highest self, to the best version of you.

Without setting your sights, you have no way to improve as a person.

Because progress in any field is tough. It requires you to put an excess of energy into a certain thing that will allow you to grow.

It’s not something that can or will happen by accident, it requires conscious thought, it requires you to purposefully take that action and put that excess of energy into the damn world so that you can become better and improve, and to purposefully take action you have to have a goal in mind, you have to know where you want to go.

Progress requires you to set your sights.

Rule 5: Stick To Your Word

Whether you like it or not, respect is a massive component of human life.

Both the respect others have for you and the respect you have for yourself.

If others don’t respect you, they won’t give you opportunities, they won’t build relationships with you and you’ll be pretty damn lonely.

If you don’t respect yourself, well that’s hell.

You’ll not take any of the right actions that you know you need to take, you’ll not move forward in life, you’ll let your standards slip and allow others to walk over you, you’ll feel anxious and guilty and the quality of your life will be pathetic.

Subconsciously, if not consciously, everyone recognises this.

Everyone knows the importance of respect.

One of the easiest ways to either ruin or build your respect from others and yourself, is how you treat your word.

A lot of people just throw their word out there, they commit to doing things that they know they won’t do, they make claims that they can’t back up, and not only do they always get caught in the long run by other people, but they themselves know their inadequacies.

They know they’re not able to stick to their word, so their word is instantly devalued by others but most importantly, it’s instantly devalued by themselves and if you cannot value your own word, you won’t respect yourself and when you don’t respect yourself, you know what happens - you fall down the mindless path of least resistance and everything, and I mean everything, will crumble around you. It might happen slowly, but it will happen until you’re in the pit you, yourself, dug.

And that’s why this is rule 5. If you cannot stick to your word, you can’t do anything.

Where most people go wrong with sticking to their word isn’t strictly their inability to do what they say, although this is definitely a massive factor, but the main reason people can’t stick to their word is because they say they will do things that they already know they won’t do.

Yes, people lack the ability to rise to what they say, we can’t ignore that, but more often than not, people have no intention of rising to what they say.

So when it comes to sticking to your word, the easiest first step to take is to be careful with your word, to be careful with what you say, and commit to, both with others and with yourself.

Because if you keep saying things that you have no intention of rising to, you will ruin your ability to rise to the things that you are able to rise to.

If you want to respect yourself so that you can live the life that you want to live, one full of progress, fulfillment, and happiness, then be careful with your word and most importantly, stick to your damn word.

- Ross

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