Welcome back to Tip Jar. Phil here — it’s good to see you. I do my best to share meaningful, interesting ideas here, but really one of the best things about running this site is reading feedback from readers.
Today, we’re revisiting crowdsourced advice from 2,800 of you who shared what to do in tough times, and what to avoid to make good times last.
These are life’s greatest lessons, according to you.
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Different stories, same lessons
I’ve found that the best advice comes from reflecting on what went wrong. So I made that my starting point when I began this survey some months ago: What advice would you give the person you were one year ago?
In parsing through responses from people of all ages and backgrounds, I found that they were incredibly repetitive.
And to me that’s encouraging.
People with wildly different mistakes, stories, relationships, and successes all had strangely parallel lessons to share. That gives me hope that there is in fact some recipe for a happy, meaningful life.
For relationships, the most common two themes that emerged were honesty and balancing expectations.
The two work together, and are necessary for relationships between friends, family members, or lovers.
- Be honest with tough questions and expect honest, tough answers.
- Understand that honesty is not easy, but expecting any less from a partner is dangerous.
- If there’s a potential relationship to build, that potential doesn’t last forever. Waffling is a sure bet to let it slip away, and it isn’t fair to expect someone to stick around and wait.
Many people wrote how relationships happen because of convenience or proximity. But when either of those are removed, the bond fizzles.
This one in particular resonated with me:
Relationships are a choice. You have to wake up everyday and decide to care.
The list also includes an emphasis on community-building:
- Make your story bigger than just yourself. Give and give and give.
- Help the people you know to grow, and you’ll grow alongside them.
- Once you graduate college, it gets harder to see friends on a regular basis. Prioritize it, because it isn’t a passive occurrence anymore.
As you could guess, people broadly shared advice about the importance of other people.
If there’s one thing you take away from today’s note, let it be that life is not a single-player game.
You can read the full list for yourself. It’s segmented into three categories: Relationships, Timing and the Future, and Personal Growth.
Bookmark the list for when you need a reminder of what matters most, and how to get there.
I hope you can learn as much from this as I did.
Thanks for reading and cheers,
— Phil
Tip Jar Recs
- A life in the woods: A beautiful essay about solitude, survival, and living in a forest on one woman’s own terms. (Bitter Southerner)
- Something different: How the “Mother of Yoda” conquered Hollywood as the world’s very best puppet designer. (Inverse)
- A glimpse of the future: Inside the success and popularity of at-home DNA kits — and the implications for your privacy. (THIS)
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