1. For the love of your own life, Don’t smoke. If you’re already smoking. Quit. The excuse that work stress made you do it, is not worth it.
2. Get exercise to be part of your daily routine.
3. Focus on quality not quantity
4. Food/Beverages: Learn, experiment, try out, taste all different types of foods. You eat 3 times a day if not more. Everyone on Earth follows the same routine, get to know food and you can break the ice in so many situations. Besides, its very tasty!
5. Cooking. Learn it. Its fun. You will get to enjoy food more and the company that comes with it.
6. Learn about Finances. Even if it might be boring, or not applicable immediately to you, learn about finances. To make money, you need to understand money, unless you luck out (which very few people do).
7. Start saving. Get into the habit of tucking a few Dollars every week. Try to build up savings for a rainy day.
8. Invest in property. As early as you can. Property in the long run, will always give you a profit.
9. Don’t get caught up in self-pity
10. Be Happy in whatever you do. If you’re not, why push yourself through it (be it life, work, personal relationships, hobbies, etc.)
11. Read. Read as much as you can, especially History and People. So many things will make sense to you.
12. Love the Outdoors. The more you are out and away from your desk, the greater the chance of enjoying life and meeting up with people (accidentally and/or by choice).
13. Dress/Attire. Learn to dress well. It pays back in multiples in life.
14. Frugality. Learn it early enough in life. You’ll thank yourself later on in life.
15. Management: Learn and read up as much as you can about being a Manager, Management Techniques, etc. Even if they may not be applicable to you right away.
16. Deliver on your word. For your word is worth more than your weight in gold.
17. A long time from now will be now really soon.
18. Reading about science is much more fun than I thought.
19. Make sure you are doing the things you want to do, because at a later age you might not be able to do it any more.
20. If you are unhappy about your job, try to find a better one. You’re going to spend a lot of time at work.
21. Make sure you can be happy on your own, your relationship might not last. And if you are happy on your own, you will have more fun together.
22. Don’t care about what people say. Do care about what friends say.
23. You can take more life risks now than you probably ever will be able to again. Your whole life is still ahead of you, and most of the life choices you’ll make at this stage aren’t necessarily permanent.
24. No opportunity is worth being taken advantage of.
25. It’s totally cool to go back to school if you need to. There’s no shame at all in picking up new skills.
26. Spend at least a year living and working in a foreign country. It’ll change the way you look at everything.
27. Money does actually matter, sadly. Try and have some kind of cushion: it’ll come in handy if things go wrong, but it’ll also come in handy for experiments.
28. Read every contract before you sign it, and always think about what it means in the worst case scenario. (Seriously.)
29. Find happiness within yourself, not from other people, and certainly not from things. Unhappiness leads to terrible choices.
Related: know that your own value is no less than anybody else’s (but, conversely, isn’t more than anybody else’s, either).
30. Keep your body healthy. It might seem indestructible now, but it won’t, sooner than you think.
31. Don’t be tied down by cultural norms, traditions or what everyone else is doing. And flatly ignore your fear of missing out.
32. Be impeccable with your word. (I try not even to tell white lies. Sometimes it is hard to tell the absolute truth but I have noticed an improvement in my relationships and a lessening in anxiety since I adopted this rule.)
33. Don’t take anything personally. (The hurtful things people say nearly always have far more to do with their own unhappiness than anything else.)
34. Don’t make assumptions. (Don’t assume you know what someone is thinking or why they’re acting like they are. Ask and you’ll nearly always find out that your assumption was wrong.)
35. Always do your best. (Realizing that your best one one day is not as good as your best on another day.)
36. The best time to take a risk, you can leave a high paying job at this age and try to do something which maybe you will not be able to do later.
37. Instead of just joining a gym, which is more difficult to stick onto, join a sport too, that ways you will be more motivated to take care of your body.
38. If you are planning to start something of your own at this age, you are probably going to fail the first time, but you are probably going to be successful if you stick and work on the aspects you failed at.
39. Don’t be a hedonist. If women, alcohol, gambling or even eating out frequently has become your only tools to happiness then it’s time to change.
40. Sort out the things that pull you. If there are people, past mistakes etc, that are pulling you, making you anxious then it’s time to sort them out and let them go.
41. Don’t judge people by what they say, judge by what they do.
42. Make good friends, the ones who will stick during bad times. And remember not to rely on people for happiness.
43. Health. Take care of your body now and you will have to spend less on fixing it later. Eat healthful food, workout, and stay away from the typical vices – your body will thank you later in life.
44. Be careful who you surround yourself with. Be careful what you choose to close an eye to.