I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with advice columns. It’s way too easy for them to slip into condescension, and seriously, who am I to know your life? I’m often told that the way I phrase things can come off as too certain and almost off-putting; I’d rather not seem like I’m solidly sure of any sort of generalizations about how to live.

I am sure, though, that these ways of thinking have done a ton of good for me, so maybe they will for you. In any case, read skeptically and roast me like a marshmallow in the comments if you think I’ve got shit twisted.

1. “Play to win, not to avoid losing.”

This, from some dozen football coaches throughout my childhood. This is one of those things that stuck in my brain as an empty truism until, for some reason, came back to me earlier this year in a sort of "Aha!" moment. But you’ve got to take it abstractly.

Like, the way I think about it, my essays are always better and more personally fulfilling if I expect to change my whole worldview by researching and writing them, rather than just trying to write something that won’t fail me. You form better relationships with people if you actively try and absorb pieces of their soul and give them pieces of yours, rather than just small-talking so as not to seem rude.

Seems like overly simple, obvious stuff, but it makes life twice as beautiful if you think on it through every action.

2. "Be here now."

This, from a book my middle brother talked to me a whole bunch about last December. I was a bit behind him; I thought it sounded pretty obvious, but I didn’t register the scope of the idea. Eventually I realized that my mind worked opposite of this saying. By being in school and having a never-ending series of obligations and assignments to attend to, it had made me constantly pull myself into the past or the future–not recognizing where I was right then.

I was always rethinking how I should respond to some earlier conversation, or thinking of what I had to do over the next few days, and those thoughts would cover the trees I passed as I walked to class in the morning, the way the lights on the North quad look like a flock of giant fireflies, the tingle of breezes.

But “being here now,” is more a matter of trusting yourself than anything. Once I started constantly reminding myself to trust myself to do what I needed to, any sort of anxiety pretty quickly dissolved as I gradually pulled away from my impossible stretch into the future and past and came back into the present.

3. "No ragrets."

Usually people apply this one in hindsight, like so:

Friend 1: “M8 you got fockin’ guttered last night, you feelin’ fit today?”

Friend 2 (holding forehead, speaks weakly): “No ragrets.”

But it’s way better as an active philosophy. We hear so much about the ragrets of the generations before us that we sometimes go through life trying not to do anything we ragret, which is paralyzing.

This connects really strongly to the ideas that I laid out in points 1 and 2: Living so that later you’ll have no ragrets can give you just one more layer of general worries, which you will indeed ragret. But living determined to never regret anything–because you fully trust yourself to handle your life in the way truest to yourself–will set you up to actually have no ragrets.

It’s not a matter of avoiding things you might ragret. It’s a matter of refusing the idea of ragrets, because ragrets are demeaning to past-you, and you deserve better than that from yourself.

Imma just restate, don't take these things as rigid precepts: The only place that things are best taken rigid is in bed. But these ideas, pretty new for me, too, have been super beneficial for my life, so hopefully they will be for yours. If you've got things to add or want to call me out on some bullshit, comment and let's talk.