25 Pieces of Life Advice: My Personal Favorites

Do the hardest things first. The little stuff will usually take care of itself. Dragon Images/Shutterstock

One of the goals of this blog is to keep me accountable. It fills the role of a coach who keeps telling me to stick to the fundamentals and do the little things right.

I’m absolutely convinced that the best advice for living well is unbelievably simple. I don’t use that word lightly… It’s literally unbelievable. Go ahead and scroll through the archives of our blog, the topics, at first glance, can appear almost silly in their simplicity.

How could anyone possibly need advice on some of these topics? Who is googling things like “how to live simply” or “how to be kind to your kids”? Do they really not know?

Of course they do! We type these simple phrases into Google, but we aren’t literally looking for an instruction manual. We’re hoping to catch a vision of what life could be like if we actually started living out these simple truths.

Because, let’s be honest, in the daily grind of life we sometimes lose our way. We default to the path of least resistance. We give into the immediate gratification instead of living into a better way of being.

So what?

I guess I say all of this just to get something off my chest. My wife and I… we’re nothing too special. I mean, if you met us, I really do think you’d like us ? But what we hope to offer the world is something simple. It’s not the advice of experts who have seen it all and done it all— it’s a vision. A vision of a simpler life lived more intentionally and relationally. That’s it.

And as we live it out, we’ll share our journey publicly on this blog. Sometimes we’ll write aspirationally (things we hope to do better) and sometimes what’s worked for us and what hasn’t.

If we have any super power, we think it’s that we take the simple sounding advice a little more seriously than the average person. We try not to laugh it off as obvious or elementary. Not until we’ve mastered it.

Now what?

Alright, so by now you’re ready for the advice promised in the title. But let me warn you… nothing on this list is going to sound earth-shattering. The power is not in the advice, it’s in the doing. It’s in taking hold of these simple ideas and taking them seriously. Treat them with the utmost seriousness and I can assure you that your life will be changed in time— that I can say from personal experience.

25 pieces of life advice:

1. Take simple ideas seriously.
2. Keep all of your endeavors as simple as possible. No extra happiness is awarded in life for taking the most creative route to your destination.
3. Set hard limits on most pleasures. Don’t let yourself be destroyed by your desires.
4. Relationships are the only pleasure that grow with exposure. Friendship is the only wealth that matters. Self-giving love is the highest mark you can possibly aim for.
5. Do the real thing. Stop planning/reading/learning about it. Get started before you feel ready.
6. Find a way to clear your mind and sleep. Even the best plans are derailed by a lack of rest.
7. One of the most practical ways to love others in your daily life  is by being reliable & responsive.
8. Build new habits by starting so small that failure isn’t possible (i.e. 1 push up a day for 14 days)
9. Do the hardest things first. The little stuff will usually take care of itself.
10. It’s not rocket science, it’s consistency. Keep showing up and doing the work, especially when you can’t see the results. If results were instant or certain, everyone would be doing it.
11. Be decisive. Not deciding now almost always means a more complicated or painful decision later.
12. Spend less than you earn. Overspending is one of the most avoidable sources of misery on earth.
13. Get really good at something. You will feel and be useful to others and this is good for both you and others.
14. Don’t wait until you feel like it. You tell yourself you will tomorrow, but you won’t. Don’t underestimate your ability to fool yourself with the same trick for years on end.
15. Life’s greatest pleasures are free. Would you rather be a billionaire without friends or living paycheck-to-paycheck with 3 of the best friends a person could have? That should tell you all you need to know about the value of friendship.
16. Enjoy the journey. Don’t be in such a hurry to be a day older.
17. More is never enough. If you can’t find contentment with what you have now, more will only make it worse.
18. Exercise every day. If the benefits of exercise came in a pill, it would be the greatest scientific breakthrough in all of history
19. Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than when you woke up.
20. Be patient. No matter your competence or the intensity of your effort, some things take time.
21. Focus on the things you can control. Focus on what you can do today. Your life will be filled with far less anxiety.
22. If you’re a parent, you will never regret the moments that you say yes to playing with your kids when they ask. That window of life can be exhausting, but it is short and you will never forget it.
23. Work on 1 thing at a time. There’s a big cost to switching tasks that we often fail to account for.
24. Decluttering your home is a choice that will send positive ripple effects throughout your entire life.
25. Be curious about the world around you right now and how it works. Master this skill and you will banish boredom forever.

This article was originally published on This Evergreen Home, you can read it here.