19 Comments
User's avatar
Simon V.'s avatar

Happy Birthday, Erik! Thanks for the write-up, these are great ideas and there's a lot of wisdom there.

Will Mannon's avatar

Great advice. Clear that it's hard-earned wisdom. Thanks Erik

Adham Bishr's avatar

Beautiful List. Favorite is "Love is a Verb".

Mehdi Yacoubi's avatar

phenomenal list

thank you!

Jason Yin's avatar

very insightful. a small question is: there is no No.30 bullet?

Sheila's avatar

Happy Birthday! This is a beautiful list of reflections. Going to share this with friends. <3

Daniel Boaitey's avatar

This is excellent

Liam O’Sullivan's avatar

I’ve been exploring the idea of a consciousness accelerator — a system that turns these kinds of insights into interactive tools and practices, using AI + behavioral science to help people not just read wisdom, but live it faster.

What if everyone had their own version of these 35 truths… but in real-time, and dynamically personalized?

Lower Pain Threshold's avatar

Advice to me at 20: drop that bong.

Mark Holzum's avatar

This reads like a systems manual for the inner life, especially the framing of responsibility as response-ability, trauma as overfitting, and environment as CapEx on willpower. The throughline I keep seeing is capacity: to feel, to choose, to love, to not get triggered. Feels less like “advice” and more like infrastructure. Appreciate you putting this out.

Liam O’Sullivan's avatar

This is excellent. Thank you for sharing 🙂

Moltar's avatar

So, these things are often written by people who are now successful. However it often correlates with people who have had the right breaks/luck circumstances. Some of the points are good, some clearly come from a place where you haven’t seen the depths of the issue.

John Hong's avatar

A lesson in thoughtfulness, certainly not just bits of advice. I should start writing a list from my much older perch.

Toby Chan's avatar

Hi Erik, I’m 21 right now. Thanks for writing!

Sandra Vu's avatar

this is a brilliant read, thanks for the essay - Erik

Sid Davis's avatar

Top notch work! So much good stuff. I will never forget when I finally learned that what people want, is often not connected to what they criticize.