Top Ten Secrets to a Successful Life

Dear Nobody in Particular,

            Though I walked away from the teaching profession a few years ago, I don’t think I ever left the classroom in my heart. As a lifelong learner, I believe one of the best gifts we can give to each other is an exchange of what we have learned during our lifetimes, especially when it’s pragmatic advice from lived experience. The Top 10 you see below were what I had figured out and implemented by my early 30s, and I first hung this poster in my classroom back in 2010. Always a great conversation starter with students and parents, these little maxims helped carry me through tumultuous times and I hope that they can do the same for you.

10) Do Your Best and Forget the Rest

            I’m not going to deny it, I stole this one. As cheesy as it may sound, this comes from a popular workout program, P90X. Tony Horton means this in the physical sense as it relates to exercising the body, but it’s a great all-encompassing dictum for life. If you always put forth your absolute best effort—no matter the endeavor—the outcome doesn’t matter. Sure you may lose a game, fail a test or bomb an interview, but if you can honestly look yourself in the mirror afterwards and know that you gave it your all there is no reason for disappointment.

9) Every Day Matters

            I stole this one too. The phrase comes from a little carved wooden sign that my mother gave me. It is so important that we recognize how tenuous life really is. We all know that we are finite beings, but we never know when any of this is going to end. It could happen in 50+ years for me, or it could be tomorrow. While it may sound morbid, it’s not. By facing your mortality, Nobody, you’ll be able to find all kinds of courage. This idea also reinforces number 10 on the list. If you don’t know when your time is up, you’re best served by consistently applying yourself and giving your best efforts all the time. When put into this combined perspective, it’s easy to see how literally EVERY DAY MATTERS.

Each day when we wake we have been given a new opportunity to try harder, to climb higher, to be a better person, to give back to the world. Whatever the case may be, living each day in the awareness that you could not be here tomorrow makes you want to give your all. When you believe that every day matters, you’ll also have the added benefit of finding joy in small moments and happiness in events that you might have once thought dull or trivial. Believe me, my happiness and life satisfaction increased tenfold when I began to truly live this way.

8) Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way

            One of the ingredients to accomplishing anything in life is willpower. If you want to live your best life, there has to be a deep urge to initiate change. But to sustain that change you need willpower. Just like anything else, the more your exercise your will, the stronger it becomes. Now, this isn’t to say that the use of the will should go unfettered; I’m not advocating imposing your will on others or anything of the sort—I’m suggesting that you impose your will on yourself. Simply having the desire to effect change will not make it manifest, though; you have to will yourself to create that change. Each of these maxims is predicated on the other. If you always do/give your best, your willpower will undoubtedly grow stronger. Add to that the persistence that comes with knowing that every day matters, and you can see how this is a recipe for success with each of these ideas being a key ingredient.

7) Don’t Meet Your Goals—Exceed Them

            Put simply, don’t be satisfied. We often set bars for ourselves, whether high or low. More often than not, we meet them and unfortunately become complacent. I think this happens when we set our goals artificially low knowing that we can achieve them; or, worse yet, when we rationalize our outcome to fall in line with our goal. On the other hand, don’t demand the impossible from yourself. Be honest and set realistic goals that will push you to demand the best from yourself every day. It may be simple like the amount of push-ups you want to accomplish during a workout, or more complex such as backing a charitable cause and raising donations. If you go into either of these tasks with success at the forefront of your mind, you’ll likely meet your goals. And if you exceed them? It just means your new goal will have to be a little bit more. Given enough time and practice, you’ll come to find that what you can reasonably demand from yourself is much more than you initially thought.

6) Make Your Dreams Your Reality

            There are two key points to this statement: 1) you must pursue your passion in life. For me, my passion is learning. I can’t stop. It’s literally an addiction. I read a lot, watch documentaries, ask questions, all for the sake of learning something new. This isn’t to say that this should be everyone’s passion—for you it may be playing a musical instrument, starting/leading a business, or transhumance (sidenote: I’ve always thought being a shepherd would be cool); 2) in a very real way, you are what you think. The reality that you create for yourself is very much a product of your mind / consciousness / imagination / perception. By mentally manifesting your dreams, they eventually become your reality through projection, especially when combined with the maxims above.

5) There Are No Mistakes—Only Opportunities to Learn and Grow

            This is the “reality check” clause of the top ten. Personal growth is never easy. In fact, a lot of the time it can be a learning process. Trial and error. We’ve all been there. This is why the other maxims precede this one. You need them to buttress your own sense of accomplishment because you will make “mistakes.” I used to tell my students that mistakes should be seen as opportunities to learn and grow. If we’re mindful of our missteps, we learn what to do differently the next time. Whatever the case may be, each “mistake” we make is—taken in the proper perspective—the potential to become better. Mistakes help us accrue wisdom to be applied to other life scenarios. Intention doesn’t matter before the mistake is made, but once a mistake has been made intention goes a long way if you integrate the lesson and grow as a person.

4) You Always Have a Choice

            Let’s face it, we’re all existentialists. We all make choices about the lives we lead, whether good, bad, or indifferent. I think these final four statements represent who I am and what I stand for at this point in my life and it has taken me a long time to get here. Who you are as a person is the culmination of the choices you’ve made up to this point in your life. That’s a scary thought, but it is one that grounds us as well. By realizing that we are the sum of our choices—whether major or minor—we can remake ourselves and radically change our lives for the better. Even though there are aspects of life beyond our control, we always have autonomy over our disposition and attitude in any situation. Again, though a threadbare cliché, you are what you think. The choices we make are part of what we think, which contribute to our sense of who we are. You have a choice in every facet of your life. Placing blame on others and playing the victim is a choice that far too many people make…but it’s also the easiest one to correct.

3) Do the Right Thing

            I hope Spike Lee doesn’t mind me borrowing his film title. It took me a long time to really understand the importance of always doing the right thing in every moment. I’d like to think I do, but it’s not easy. Sometimes doing the right thing goes against the grain. This is where you’ll be tested the most, especially over seemingly trivial matters. It’s evident that human nature by default is communal/social, thereby making it necessarily altruistic. Deep down I believe our nature as social creatures creates a moral imperative for us to look out for one another. And if you start to string all of these maxims together and live them out, doing the right thing in all situations will become second nature.

2) There’s Always Room for Improvement

            This one speaks for itself. I like to push myself. To see how far I can go. It doesn’t matter if it is working out, playing sports, reading, writing, thinking, or loving my wife, family and friends. You can take all of the preceding statements and add them up and think everything is going great and then you get to this one. This is the one statement that I cannot live without. The reason I love it so much is because it keeps me hungry. I will always strive for my best, but I do so realizing that the best can never be attained.

In addition to keeping me hungry, this dictum keeps me humble. We can always be better people, each and every single one of us. All it takes is a commitment to doing your best, making sound choices, and everything in between. And then, when you think you’re done or accomplished something of merit, know that if you can do those things you can probably do more or better. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t be satisfied or proud of our accomplishments, but personal growth should happen every day. You’ve got to keep pushing yourself, or as I used to tell my students…

1)  Keep Chipping Away

            Keep chipping away has become my personal motto. I used have it programmed into my old flip phone as the greeting message when I turned it on. While this simple statement will eventually be extrapolated into its own letter, here’s a brief explanation. Too many people talk about life as if it were a race. I think that metaphor works, provided you use it in the context of a marathon. Life certainly isn’t a sprint or a jog. To me, however, I think our lives are a work of art. A personal sculpture that is completely our own. Each day we are given matters because it is another chance to further refine our sculpture, our lives, and ultimately, ourselves. The good choices we make to promote personal growth are the tiny improvements being made in our magnum opus. We’re bound to make mistakes, but those are just opportunities for further refinement. Sometimes sculptors need to buff out minor errors before they pick up the hammer and chisel again. But the key is to just keep chipping away.

When examining the list as a whole, I’m sure you can see how these “secrets” are all interdependent and ultimately lead to this conclusion—that we must give our best in every attempt and each moment in order to grow as a person. This transformation will not come easily, however. It will take lots of time and a tremendous amount of effort, so be patient and apply yourself with persistence. Genuine, permanent change rarely happens overnight; it is a long, arduous process.

But it’s totally worth it…

Pax vobiscum,

Ryan / Phunky

P.S. - Many years after I first hung this poster, a former colleague who had transitioned to administration texted me this pic out of the blue one day. Apparently one of my former students, roughly 8 years later, had become a teacher and printed out the Top 10 to hang in her own classroom. I hope they have a similar impact on you or any other Nobody you share them with 🙏❤️