Unfortunately, time is not on our side and as of today everyone will eventually die. That is a fact of life. I’ve noticed that it feels like time is moving faster every year I get older. It’s what you do with that time that makes a difference of what people will remember you for. You have to choose your priorities, choose what you want to spend your time on, and choose what you want to give a f**k about. Yes, I just quoted Mark Manson, who has two amazing self-help books, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and Everything is F*cked. All of the haters may call you selfish, but I view it as you are one person and you won’t please everyone in life. And you shouldn’t be expected to please everyone in life. That’s not how the world works. I think it’s ok to be selfish at times and who cares what other people think. 

I used to have a friend who I was pretty close with right after college. We had a great friendship at first, but in my opinion he became overly toxic and had a very negative attitude about life. We would get into political arguments, he would blame the world for everything, and he would get argumentative just to win an argument AKA a troll. So how do you deal with a troll? You ignore them. All they want is the attention. I stopped inviting him to things with my other friends at the time as I felt like he was being a mooch off of me for his social needs. We eventually parted ways mutually and haven’t really seen each other since. The one thing that I learned from this experience is to remove toxic people from your life no matter how close you are to them. People can only change themselves and no one else can do it for them. Dealing with toxic people is physically and mentally draining and I don’t need them in my life. In my opinion, they are not worth your time and I chose to prioritize other things.

My priorities in life are physical health, family, friends, my career, and putting good out into the world. I watched the Netflix TV Show, Cobra Kai, a while ago and one episode made me ball my eyes out (S3E4). Daniel LaRusso went back to Okinawa for a sign from Mr. Miyagi and he ran into his old flame. But in the next episode (S3E5) she said her Aunt used to say “Put good out in the world and good will come back to you.” I truly believe that and I believe in karma. Maybe that’s the superstitious side of me! 

What makes the United States of America great is that you can choose your priorities and choose what you want to do with your life! No one forces you to do things that you do not want to do. We only have so much time in this life and you have to choose things that you really value. I used to think that having a ton of different skills and being good at everything was the best way to utilize skills. But after reading The Cheat Code by Brian Wong, he said that you should really focus your time into fewer things (or just one thing) and master those skills. I definitely changed my mind about that and I am now focusing my time on less things and prioritizing mastering certain skills. One of my goals this year was to build stronger relationships with close friends, closing my inner circle, and I think that helps with time management.