21 Life lessons for Teenagers - Ali Abdaal

 Hello guys, in the mentioned video Mr. Ali Abdaal talks about the bits and advice that he would give to teenagers, let’s get into it.

THINK ABOUT THE GAME YOU ARE PLAYING, and do think about what are the victory conditions for the game are. When you were in school at that moment the game was pretty much about getting good grades to try to get into university.

But when you go to the university, that is probably when you realize that this is not the game you are probably going to play. And you fall into the trap of continuing to try and play that exam results game because its just what you have known but it’s one of those things that if you are going to play that game then there’s nothing wrong with playing that game but if you are going to play it then play it intentionally rather than accidentally. And this question of when what game am I really playing? It’s actually a good one to keep asking yourself every few months just to make sure that you are still playing the game that you thought you were playing and that crucially, that you still want to be playing the game that you have found yourself playing. Because to be honest that decision that you took when he was 16 or 17 to go to medical school, you don’t need to hold yourself to that decision for the rest of your life and you can actually ensure that the sunk cost and just think what’s the game am I playing right now? And is the game I really want to be playing?

TRY AND DEVELOP SOME SKILLS, that you know those are going to compound over the long-term, and this is something that you want to appreciate when you’re 18 because you’re going to be thinking about the short-term and you are going to be thinking like everyone does in their own like interest in the here and now but you really want to start doing things at 18 or even younger than that. You might want to start doing things at 18 that are going to compound over time.

PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR POSTURE, when you are young you spent a lot of time sitting on your computer and doing things because you are cool, but you would not see any problems when you’re 18, you won’t have any pain, you won’t have any issues like that. But further down the line, maybe when you are 26, you might be thinking damn my posture is really-really bad and I wish I had corrected this 8 years ago.

TAKE A LOT MORE PHOTOS THAN YOU THINK YOU SHOULD because again, you won’t notice it at the time, and you might think it’s a bit of inconvenience taking photos of stuff but your university years are never going to come again. And in the future, you are always going to be so glad of the memories that you recorded by taking photos at events and taking photos of even of your friends, as you were having chills in your room.

BE MORE OF A DOCUMENTARIAN, of the stuff you are consuming and the stuff you’re creating. I please-please-please, when you read a book or when you read an article or listen to a podcast or when you read, I don’t know maybe, “The 4-Hour Work Week” or something like that.

When you read these books, please write some notes about what your thoughts and feelings were, as you were reading them. Again, it's one of those things that you probably won’t appreciate at the time or would be like, “Oh, I’ve read this book. I just want to go on to the next one.” But if you just take even 10 to 15 minutes to consolidate your thoughts and to think about, okay what did I actually learn from this? And how have my feelings, how’ve my reactions, how’s my behavior changed as a result of reading this thing. Or listening to this podcast then that is actually gonna help you in the present moment. But its also going to be really interesting to look back on in the future and even better, if you put those things on a public website, then that is going to get domain value, and then your own brand will start to grow much quicker than it actually did because at that time you were just taking the time to document the things that you were learning along the way and doing your best to try and help others.

TRY TO BE A CONNECTOR OR A HUB, that helps connect different people or different friendship groups. You’re gonna have a lot of anxiety and insecurity going into the university about making friends. You’re gonna be worried that you’re not gonna make friends, you’re gonna be worried that no one’s going to like you. Firstly, take heart because everyone suffers but secondly, realize that any friendship group needs someone to bring them together, and be okay with being that person.

Be okay with being the person to set up a WhatsApp group for a group of friends.

Be okay with taking the first step towards inviting people to your room to hang out.

Be okay with organizing an event.

Be okay with all that kind of stuff.

Because everyone when they are in that kind of position, they want someone to take charge and you can absolutely be that person if you want.

YOU HAVE PUT YOURSELF OUT THERE, you’re going to do a pretty good job of putting yourself out there, you’re gonna join all these clubs and all these meeting lists and all these societies, and you’re going to all these events and recognize that while that’s all very good. There’s always more that you could be doing. And if it’s a choice between sitting in your room one night, watching “The Vampire Diaries”, or you know, making the extra effort to get dressed and go to that event that maybe you’ve been putting off please go to the event. Again, it's one of those things where the individual event that you go to probably won’t matter but the more you expose yourself to other people in a non-weird way, the more your surface area for serendipity will just increase. And you’re going to find yourself, meeting people and making friends in the unlikeliest of circumstances, but the way that you can essentially optimize that luck in your favor is by putting yourself out there more than you currently are.

Thanks,

TEAM_TTIN.

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