A rule that saves a lot of pain: When emotions are high, speed should be low. You don’t have to answer the email immediately. You don’t have to respond to that slight. You don’t have to make that decision. You don’t have to do anything. Slow down. Create space to think clearly.
Don’t be afraid to be intense and extreme. Don’t be afraid of your own drive and energy. Make peace with your anger and let it fuel you. Everyone will tell you to turn it down and they’ll all be wrong. Get angrier. Get sharper. Get faster and better. Feed the inner fire.
you must believe you are special and then go so hard, for so long, with such violent refusal to accept any other ending, that reality itself starts running out of ways to tell you no. you must wage a war daily against the ordinary outcome, until the belief you invented out of nothing in a room by yourself has been hammered into the world so many times that it stops being a claim and becomes reality.
turns out, reading a lot, exercising, loving people without expecting anything back, protecting your alone time, focusing only on improving yourself, and sometimes staying out late with friends who make you laugh until it hurts is a pretty good way to live.