Re-defining Life's Standards

Day 1-5 / 1000

Feb 13, 2026

Let me ask you something:

Are you living your life, or are you living the life you think you’re supposed to live?

Because there’s a massive difference.

This week I’m sharing five lessons from my 20s that changed how I see success, relationships, and what it actually means to “make it.” Some of them hurt to write. All of them needed to be said.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re following someone else’s rulebook for your own life, keep reading.

This week's lessons:

Are we really adults?
Re-defining success in life.
The limiting belief I once held.
Are we fitting in or belonging there?
The single most dangerous distraction for a young person.

1. Are we really adults?

Let me ask you this: If you could give your younger self one rule to filter every major decision through, what would it be and why?

Over the past couple of years, I realized something in retrospect.

When making major decisions like where I want to move, who I choose to love and be in a relationship with, what career path I want to pursue, or even what friends I want to keep in my life, all of these decisions were not made in the same way.

They were also not made in the same moment, but over a lifetime, and in different situations and parts of my life in my 20s.

My rule here is: trust your instincts, shaped by past experiences, learned lessons, and your gut feeling.

It’s easier said than done.

In our 20s, we just think we are adults because of the number on our age, and because society tells us we are so after we reach this or that age.

The opposite is true.

You don’t just happen to become an adult overnight by turning 21.

You need to live to get more experience under your belt.

You need to go through those hard, unexpected life situations that our teachers never taught us in school, and learn from them on your own to avoid getting hurt or disappointed next time.

I once heard it on a podcast: our 20s are the toughest decade of our lives, and it struck me because it just makes sense.

We live for the very first time on our own, we can do whatever we want, we make all the major decisions but also need to carry the uncertainty and pressure of learning how to actually live a life and not be dependent on anyone else except us.

What is the rule you would give your younger self?

2. Re-defining success in life.

How do we define “success” without using the words money, fame, or status in our 20s?

I believe that success is determined by our minds.

Each individual defines their own success metric.

Today’s society, and a world full of social media, is serving us that success is defined by money, fame, or status. To a certain point, it is true, but it’s not the only metric to use.

Money gives us freedom to choose what we want to do, when we want to do it, with whom we want to do it, and on what conditions we want to do it. It is indeed a powerful feeling to be able to decide on almost everything thanks to money.

Fame is a false feeling of power. It can disappear the same way it appeared. Fast. If one builds their identity around fame, they’re set to fail sooner or later.

Status is the old-world metric for success. Everything was based on status in society, in small towns, or in tribes.

Without status, there was no success. Status could get people everywhere, simply because of the connections it brought.

It is still powerful today, of course, but status doesn’t play that big of a role anymore.

I think that people are slowly discovering the real truth behind success.

Success comes from within us and from our own mental models.

For some people, success can mean having a stable job, being able to pay bills, feed the family, and occasionally go on vacation.

For others, it’s a private jet and a yacht.

And for a few others, it’s making a change in the world.

Success is not universal; everyone defines it differently.

For me, the definition of success means three things.

First, I want to have a happy family and people around me that I can share a life with. There is nothing more beautiful in this world than having a community around you and friendships with the right people.

Second is freedom. I want to be able to do many things in my life without constraints, lack of time, or lack of money. I don’t chase fame or status. I want respect, yes, but I don’t need to be recognized on the streets.

Third, I want to help people become a better version of themselves, and that is how I would define success.

I would love to hear from you how you define success in your life.

3. The limiting belief I once held.

We all possess some limiting beliefs.

Each one of us has some, but the question is: how can you even spot the limit of belief, and who and what defines it as limiting and not true, and everyone else is wrong on this one?

It is hard because we take on all sorts of beliefs from our parents as we grow up, and then it is friends, who bring their beliefs, injected into them by their parents.

I struggle to find a limiting belief that I already identified and changed.

But one of them is to believe something that has been said to you, and you have identified with it.

It’s almost like the old saying that just because you weren’t good at math in school, you’re not good at math in general.

This dysfunctional belief stayed with me for a very long time, even though I was good at math in primary school. Everything changed once I hit high school.

Was it the teacher? Was it the subject? Who knows.

The important part is that you aren’t bad at math or any other subject; it is purely your own self-talk that is convincing you of that.

Maybe the teacher, classmates, or even parents told you that you are not good at it, and because you heard it repeatedly over and over, you adopted this belief as your reality.

The fact is, if you would really like to be good at math, you can just study more, practice more, and eventually you are going to be more than able to solve the equations that now seem to be alien to you.

The same rule applies to almost everything.

Just because you were not picked first at sport class doesn’t mean you are the worst.

I was picked last in school repeatedly, and it stuck with me for a while that I might suck at it. Until I practiced more and more in my free time.

Suddenly, I wasn’t picked last.

I was given the trust that I’m better now, and it didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen just because my friend was picking the team; it happened because of my practice.

Practice makes you better at whatever you do in your life repeatedly; it becomes muscle memory, and you will start noticing you are getting better and better.

What is the limiting belief you still hold?

How hard was it for you to identify this belief?

4. Are we fitting in or belonging there?

What is the difference between “fitting in” and “belonging”? Why does chasing one often cost you the other?

I see two fundamental differences between fitting in and belonging somewhere.

You can move abroad, change friend groups, school, or job.

When you fit in, some of your qualities and parts of your personality align with your surroundings. You can more easily blend in.

You will probably make some friends, you will find some common topics to talk about with people around you, and you might also meet some opinions with which you will also agree.

But all of this doesn’t mean you belong there.

Fitting in is a temporary state that is tied to a special outcome, situation, place, or group of people.

Like friend groups, for example.

You are fitting in because you all like basketball and hip-hop music. You share interests and opinions, but you are not really into alcohol, parties, and drugs.

You fit in because you can talk about the same topics, but you don’t belong there because once you start doing things that you fundamentally don’t want to do, but you do it because of the friend group; it’s not your friend group anymore, and you should find new friends.

Belonging somewhere, on the other side, is a completely different story.

You have a deeper feeling inside of you. You feel like everything would be aligned with these people, with this place, or work.

It’s not only about the activities or conversations; it is about the fact that you feel yourself where you are and with who you are there.

The feeling of belonging somewhere brings calm, confidence, trust, and energy to grow further in your life.

Those moments of belonging are very unique because we can’t simulate them. When it happens, you will know.

When was the last time you felt that you really belonged somewhere?

5. The single most dangerous distraction for a young person.

What is the single most dangerous distraction for a young person trying to build something meaningful?

There is no single distraction that can be crowned the most dangerous.

I believe many common distractions can be overwhelming for young people trying to build something.

Especially in the 20s, there are so many things around us that are trying to distract us.

For a young person in their 20s, it is also quite difficult to notice this because it is, indeed, the first decade of a young person’s life that you live fully. But that also means there is so much new stuff to try and experience, which can be distracting.

I think that person actually should try different things out because, without that, it is hard to learn what is good and what is bad.

I used to drink alcohol, do some crazy stuff, and go to parties.

All of these are dangerous distractions that I would name straight away, holding young people back from achieving more and building something meaningful.

But if I didn’t live through it, I don’t know if I would have the experience and knowledge to be able to focus on other things.

At the same time, I’m not trying to advertise that young people should try alcohol and drugs to learn that it is not the perfect way to spend life, because there are many young people who already know that they are not missing out by leaving all of these things off the table.

Yet many still believe the opposite.

The thing is, I believe that it’s not so important to focus on the distractions, but to focus on what’s actually moving the needle in the direction we want to go.

Young people, and not only they, should spend a significant amount of time during their 20s trying different things out to find a way to understand themselves better and find what they want to do with the rest of their lives.

The 20s are basically the launchpad for the rest of our lives. It’s like life on a discount.

We have time to try, fail, learn, and go again without paying too steep a price for our mistakes or bad experiences.

When we invest this time in truly learning about ourselves, we gain a significant advantage in the future: the ability to be true to ourselves and do what we truly desire over the long term.

What do you think is the most dangerous distraction for a young person?

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