You should do 10 minutes of metta meditation per day.

Set the timer, sit up straight, bring your hands together, then think to yourself (one thought per exhalation)

• May I be protected and safe
• May I be free from sickness and suffering
• May I be peaceful and happy
• May I be free from troubles and worry
• May I be healthy and strong
• May there always be kindness and friendship in my life
• May I take care of myself with ease and joy

Once that’s finished - seven breaths - pick someone else and say these things to them (silently in your own head), again one breath at a time.

Pick someone whom it’s easy to wish well upon.

Once that’s finished, pick someone of medium difficulty to feel good about. Maybe someone neutral.

Once that’s finished, pick someone who’s hard to feel good about. Maybe an enemy, or someone who disgusts you.

Then medium.

Then easy again.

Follow the pattern easy-medium-hard-medium-easy-medium-hard-medium-easy-… until the timer goes off.

Normally I recommend starting a meditation practice with 5 minutes per day, but with 5 minutes and slow breaths you barely get through one person this way.

Go to another country for 1 year. A country with different culture and with a different language.

Have a sense of humor and don’t be so serious all the time.

To prove that I don’t struggle to understand what highly-specific means - read this book from eCover to eCover.

Save 15%. Even if it absolutely sucks to do so. If you have to dip in to the 15%, it better be for life or death. Skip meals to save that 15%.

1$ saved at 20 is like 20$ saved at 40.

Also, don’t cash advance from a credit card, ever, for any reason. I once bought a 6$ taco at age 18 on cash advance, and once I finally cleared it off, that taco had cost me almost 500$. I did the math.

Smoke weed erry day.

Go to party every day. Fuck everyone you can. Use all the drugs. You’re going to miss this time when your body could take it all without problems.

If you’re American, your credit score affects a whole lot more than your creditworthiness. A bad, or even not as good score can affect your chances at getting a job, getting a place to live, and more commonly, how much you pay for car insurance.

We give a lot of shit to China over their social credit score, but we’ve had ours for years, we just pretend it’s only for creditworthiness. When your job does pre employment checks, they can also do a credit check. Many apartment complexes do the same. Hell, even utility companies can check your credit and decide you are a risk and ratchet up your deposit.

It’s not a guarantee that anyone does this, but it is a possibility. Be on your best behavior, citizen, the credit bureaus are watching.

If you grew up with trauma (or even if not) and have anxiety and stress get that shit under control now or it will lead to painful chronic illnesses after 30. Read about ACES and learn how to manage stress now.

The gals at the strip club don’t actually care about you.

Find time to talk to people in person, at least the ones that are close to you. Just go with them for coffee/snack/beer and talk without the aid of technology.

EDIT : Make it a rule to have coffee/snacks/drinks only in company of real people.

If you start college (assuming you’re an American) do not under any circumstances drop out. This goes double for grad school. What will happen is the at you’ll still owe money on your student loan, but will not have whatever advantages you might have accumulated as a result of having a degree.

Buy what you value, not merely what you can afford.

Floss, brush your teeth daily and see a dentist at least once a year, eat less sugar and cut out soft drinks. Nothing worse than in losing or nearly losing one or two teeth in your 30s or 40s. Even without cavities, if you don’t take care of your gums, you can lose perfectly healthy teeth because the gums were eroded away.

Do some weight training and keep up an exercise routine … you can easily build muscle tone over the next ten years, after that you have to work a whole lot more to gain the same amount of muscle tone.

Eat less and eat healthy … learn to eat better and just eat less but better food … the sooner you learn this, the longer you’ll keep the habit and the longer the habit in your life, the longer you’ll live and the longer you’ll live healthier. What’s the sense of living to 80 when you end up sick and unhealthy for the last 20 years of your life?

Read, read, read … read the classics, read history, and read as much and as often as you can to fill out your knowledge and awareness of as much as possible.

Do all this now because you will never gain the time to do it all later.

Never assume that you can do things when you’re 30 when you’re 40 or when you retire because those times will either never come or when those times come, you won’t have the time or you will have so many other priorities that you won’t do these things anyway.

So do all these things now while you can because later may not arrive or when it does, it won’t be like you imagined it would be.

When it comes to buying furniture: Get secondhand furniture handed down by relatives, or found at thrift stores, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, garage sales, whatever. It’s more eco-friendly to buy stuff that already exists, it’ll probably cost less than brand-new furniture, and the older stuff is sturdier than anything you’re going to get at Ikea.

With the money you save buying secondhand tables and drawers and such, buy a GOOD brand new mattress. You can cheap out on a lot of furniture, but never cheap out on a mattress. Decades from now, your back will thank you.

Your 30s will be better. Don’t get hung up on thinking your 20s are prime.