15 Unspoken Life Lessons You Need to Know

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In life, there are lessons that can't be taught in a classroom or found in books. These are the unspoken life lessons that only come from personal experience and the challenges that we face. So here are 15 unspoken life lessons you need to know.

First up, you are not made of glass. This is the first thing you learn when you go through immense hardship. You are not this fragile human being who can only take so much before you get overwhelmed. Even big changes, like moving to an entirely different country or quitting the job you've been working on for so many years, or going through a bad breakup, they won't break you like you think they would. Your tolerance for crap is way higher than you think; you just need to test it out a bit. Sometimes you might need just a little break or a reset to get back on track. At some point in life, you'll have to go through something like this. It's not the end of the world; in fact, very few things are the end of the world.

You overestimate your fear. Most of the things that seem terrifying to you are actually not that bad. You just imagine the worst-case scenario. But just like it's extremely unlikely to get everything right, it's also extremely unlikely to get everything absolutely wrong. Have a little bit of faith in yourself. Let your fear just be there. Let it exist as a reminder of the risks you're taking, but do not let it overwhelm you. You see, being fearless doesn't mean you have nothing to fear. It means you're doing the things you need to do despite the fact that it's scary to you.

Most things have a very short learning curve. It means that it takes ten thousand hours to master something, and that might be true; it might vary a bit person to person. But we can all agree that you need to practice a lot to become really good at something. But there's another side of this that's not spoken about very often, and we think it's actually more valuable than the ten thousand-dollar rule: it takes less than 100 hours to become familiar with something, and that's like less than a month of practice. You see, most things have a very short learning curve, meaning you get used to it fairly quickly.

Think about driving, for example. Becoming a professional race car driver takes years of practice, but learning to get safely from A to B? Well, not that much. And it's true for most skills out there.

Some things just don't work out no matter how much you try to make something happen. Sometimes it's just not meant to be—not from a destiny point of view, but from circumstances. Maybe the timing is wrong, maybe you're not ready, or maybe that thing is just not for you and you've been lying to yourself. The point is, just because something doesn't work out doesn't mean that you failed. If you need to let go of something, let go of it and move on.

Fix what's bothering you. Don't let little things that bother you go unmanaged, because eventually they will make you bitter. If someone does something you don't particularly appreciate, hell, if you do something you don't particularly appreciate, address it. Don't let it sit there and fester. Easy problems are usually fixed easily if addressed when they happen, but it becomes trickier to fix something that you let happen for years, because by that point, you've created a habit.

Your health is more important than you give it credit for. And we're talking both about your physical and mental health here. When you're like under 25, you feel indestructible, right? You can function with barely any sleep and a Happy Meal in your stomach suits you just fine. But after 30, things start to change a bit and they change rather suddenly. It almost takes you by surprise; yesterday you were fine and now you need a back pillow for your chair because someone cursed you with lower back pain overnight.

You see, health is one of those things that's not a problem until it suddenly is. You can't just get healthy real quick. It takes time and you need to do it proactively. And the way the world works right now, it promotes being incredibly unhealthy and inactive. Fast food will always be more convenient. You sit everywhere, and ironically all this takes more of your time rather than the other way around. You need to actively push against it and reserve time for your own health.

Don't chase someone else's dream. Look, it takes some time to become your own person. Okay? Up until then, you live a predefined life dealt by your immediate environment. You go to the same school as everybody else, you take the same classes as they do, you dream of the same high-paying job as everybody, and the list goes on. But at some point, you need to break away from this predefined path and it takes a lot of courage to say, actually, you know what, I think I'm gonna do something else.

You are already living the life. Have you ever heard someone say, "Ah man, I can't wait for that to happen so I can start living the life"? Well, guess what, my friend? You're already there. 7.8 billion people are currently quite literally living the life. There's no magical point from which this life begins. If you sacrificed most of your life and became extraordinarily rich at like 65, what's the point really?

Some things are meant to be done at different points in life. You're not going to be skiing the Alps with your buddies in between therapy sessions for your arthritis, so go out there and live a little right now.

Stop taking so many risks. Yeah, you heard that right. Once in a blue moon, a massive risk actually pays off. A lot of you might have heard about Fred Smith, the FedEx founder, who literally gambled the company's last five thousand dollars on Blackjack and won twenty-seven thousand dollars, saving the company from bankruptcy at the last minute. But what about Lorenzo Ferdinand, the former CEO of Continental Airlines, who in an attempt to save the company from bankruptcy took a risky move by using the company's funds to speculate in the oil market, and nobody's heard of him since? Gee, I wonder why.

You see, playing it nice and steady is almost always the better option. It's easy to look back in retrospect and see countless opportunities where big risks could have made you a fortune. But since you can't see the future, you can only speculate; basing your strategy on a maybe it's gonna work rarely works.

You get three fun slots, so use them. Once you get more stable in life, you start to unlock what we call fun slots. These are basically activities that you do for fun in a repeating manner. From our experience, you get two, which you can do pretty regularly every time you want to, and then there's one that's more seasonal. Things like, oh I don't know, martial arts and hiking, plus sailing in Greece in the summer. If you get more than three, you're either retired or extremely efficient with your resources. And some people, they barely explore one.

At the end of the day, or at the end of life, if you will, life is supposed to be fun. Don't get caught up in the everyday hustle all the time. Think of these three slots as bonuses you earn from your hard work. Don't feel bad filling them up with fun stuff you like. Spending money on a hobby is rewarding, and it makes you feel like you actually work for something that you can enjoy right now. You're not just a little mouse in this rat race.

Getting money should be a top priority. If you don't think money will solve most of your problems, you're naive. The only people who say money doesn't bring happiness are rich people who want to sound relatable and poor people who look for an excuse. We're not saying you should always have money on your mind because that does more harm than good, but you should always prioritize being able to provide for yourself and your family.

You need to fix life problems first before you can fix your soul problems. Go out there and get better; get smarter, get more educated and increase your earning potential. It would really kind of be a shame if you didn't work for your titles. This is something we learned from Derek Sivers, who we highly recommend you check out.

So what do we mean by this? You see, during your life, you earn different titles. Things like great friend, great partner, athlete, entrepreneur, shy, outgoing, musician, you get the point. And these titles fade out if you don't keep them. You see, if you built a company 15 years ago and you haven't touched anything related since, well, you were an entrepreneur back then, but you're not one right now. The same way if you were an athlete in college but you haven't kept your physical condition since then, well, you can't really call yourself an athlete these days.

So why is this useful? Well, for one, when you think about it like this, you can start working more for the titles that you want to keep and let go of the ones that you used to have. If you were untrustworthy and unreliable in the past, well, you can renounce those titles by becoming trustworthy and reliable. You see, these titles are not for life. Same way if you were a great creative person in the past and you like that title, well, keep working for it.

We find it very liberating when you put things into this perspective. Self-discipline is probably the most valuable trait. Those who master self-discipline are the creators of their own future; it's as simple as that. Okay, there's no personal problem you can have that discipline can't fix. There's no goal that discipline can't grab for you if you do the things that you need to do at the time they need to be done. The goals that you put forward for yourself are unavoidable; you just can't really fail, and since that self-discipline is such a powerful force, it's also insanely hard to achieve it. You need to overcome a lot of different things, from who you are to where you are, in order to truly become a master at self-discipline. Very few people are good at that.

Don't avoid dealing with annoying people or situations. Yes, we know life is so much easier when you don't have to deal with annoying people on a daily basis. And most of the time you can avoid situations that annoy you, but you have to understand two things here: one, you can't avoid annoying people forever; and two, you don't have to be friends with someone to work together toward a common goal. Learning how to deal with annoying stuff is a lot less of a headache than constantly trying to avoid it.

And finally, find some form of life philosophy, or in other words, find what's valuable for you and what isn't, and then pursue it at your own pace. This is the only way to truly live free. You see, this isn't about what feels good and what feels bad. This isn't about your feelings; it's about what's worth having. If you value having a high health level, you'll have to go through the inconvenience and pain of altering your body through exercise and nutrition. If you value having healthy relationships, you need to learn how to deal with your emotions and other people's emotions.

People who lack a life philosophy go through life purely motivated by impulses and what feels good in the moment. And who knows, that might be what's worth it for you.

We hope you found this video valuable. Alexa and we hope you're enjoying the Honest Talk series. We'll see you back here tomorrow for the Sunday motivational video.

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