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Watch the essay here
Today I'm 40.
I started my life in the projects, didn't graduate high school, and became a stone-cold alcoholic making so little money I was stealing food to survive.
Eventually, I went on to be a standout Golden Glove-winning and national champion boxer, got signed by Roc Nation Sports as a professional, served in the military, got a degree in physics, and met the woman of my dreams along the way—and now said woman and I—who have lived in Portugal because she's born and raised in Portugal—have a kid.
I'm also just finished my first book to be published by a major publishing house about my life, titled "Hard Lessons From The Hurt Business: Boxing and The Art of Life." You can pre-order here.
It's been a wild ride, and I'm happy to be celebrating 4 decades on this planet and 40 trips around the sun.
Still, I would have avoided a lot of crazy women, addictions, and financial mistakes if I had someone in my life to tell me the 27 things I'm about to share with you that I've learned along the way.
Quick note. This is the last email to get on the waitlist for my Zero-Edit YouTube Workshop. There will be three workshops where I will teach the low-edit method I've used to grow my YouTube channel and make $2500/mo in ad revenue without using fancy edits, b-roll, or even music.
27 brutal truths I wish I knew in my 20s and 30s
- No one is going to save you from anything—especially yourself.
The only reason I got my life together, stopped drinking, and enlisted in the army was because one day, after waking up with beer spilled all over my chest from falling asleep yet again while drinking by myself,
I looked in the mirror and said, “Yo, bruh, you’re a loser.” That’s hard for a man to admit, but it’s the only way you can change your life.
- Get over whatever happened to you as a child.
Some of us were hurt, abused, and neglected. It’s an absolute travesty, and it’s sad, but you don’t get a special pass on adult responsibility or an exemption from following the law because you stay drunk and high to deal with your problems.
- It’s never too late to do anything.
I've been a late bloomer my whole life. I didn’t even graduate from high school. I didn’t start boxing until I was 22. I didn’t enlist in the army until I was 29. I didn’t graduate from college until I was 33. I didn’t have my first kid until 37, and my first published book won’t be released until later this year when I’m 40.
Don’t ever think you’re behind or ahead in life. You’re exactly where you need to be as long as you keep progressing towards something meaningful and you aren’t afraid to start.
- Seek out mentors. If you’re unsatisfied with any segment of your life, you’re a fool if you don’t seek mentors who succeed in the area you wish to improve. Learning from others who have already done what you’re trying to do is the biggest life hack I can think of.
I’ve watched many men remain losers because they refuse to cut their ego and ask more accomplished men how to improve their health, increase their dating options, and fix their finances. Real men have no problem asking for advice from men who are better than them in a particular area.
- If you drink like a standard American 20-something, you’re probably an alcoholic.
The only reason you don’t think that is because you’ve got the wrong idea of what an alcoholic is. You think it’s someone who has liquor stashed in the car, getting behind the wheel plastered, and gets the shakes if they go too long without drinking.
But if you’re in your 20s and have the balls to look up the behaviors of an alcoholic, you might be surprised that you’re just a functioning drunk.
- If you have a problem with alcohol, don’t expect any of your friends who don’t have a problem to check you.
They’re gonna feel like hypocrites or enablers, so they’re just gonna chalk your behavior up to the booze, but there will come a point where they just ghost you.
- There’s a thin line between enjoying your youth and messing up your future.
There are some mistakes you make, you learn from, and the only penalty you suffer is a bruised ego and wounded pride. But there are other mistakes that leave you with an incurable disease, a physical disability or disfiguration, or a criminal record. All these things will make it much harder to have a decent, stress-free life.
- There is no downside to being attractive.
A lot of you aren’t even ugly. You just stopped trying. You let your body get soft and fat, you don’t sleep, you buy ill-fitting clothes for cheap, and you don’t take the time to groom yourself. People treat you better and assume the best when you look put together.
You get more opportunities for dates and friendships, and you even get paid more. You can’t do anything if you’re short or have a funny bone structure, but that doesn’t mean you should give up on the things you have control over because those can turn a 4 into a 6 and a 6 into an 8.
- Take your reputation seriously.
People talk and the internet is forever. If you get a reputation for behaving a certain way, don’t be surprised if people start talking to you less and less. A good reputation opens doors that you didn’t even know existed and a bad reputation keeps you from ever making progress.
- Don't do anything in the shadows you can’t stand by if it comes to light.
A lot of you guys are one screenshot of a DM or text message away from ruining your whole lives. And I ain’t just talking about sliding into some girl’s DMs while your wife and kid are sitting next to you on the couch.
Some of y’all talk trash on people you claim to be friends with, and it can all be exposed and make all of your friends start looking at you a certain way.
- Keep an 800 credit score with your friends.
If you owe money to friends or loved ones, pay it back when you said you would or as soon as you have it; whichever comes first. If you have to choose between paying back a friend and paying back an institution, always pay the friend back first.
Friends are faster than banks and understand if things come up. Friends also know if you’re bullshitting, and friends hate to be bullshitted. If you want to be respected by people, even your enemies, always keep your word.
- There’s a big difference between being liked and being respected.
You only think they’re the same because you aren’t used to being either. When people like you, they’ll have you around for fun, but they will never take you seriously or respect you. Especially because many things that make you fun—especially to people in their 20s—tend to make you less respectable. But when you behave in a respectable way aligned with your values, not everyone will like you and remember, that’s ok, but people will respect you.
- Get off that loner bs.
People need people. We’re wired to connect and interact. For most of human existence, survival was impossible if you weren’t part of a tribe. And we ain’t even talking about the romantic side of things and procreation to keep the species going.
You need to find a tribe of people you can touch grass with, meaning not just saying all types of derogatory ish to each other on Xbox Live or only chatting on social media.
- Don’t ever change who you are to fit in.
I know I told you you need to find your tribe, but bad company is worse than no company. If you don’t like a group of people, but you try to change who you are to fit in with them, you’re gonna hate the group AND hate yourself.
Not only are you uncomfortable, but now you’ve come to something you didn’t like in the first place.
- Not caring what other people think is a superpower.
Don’t get this advice twisted. I’m telling you not to care about the image you put into the world or your reputation. Also, don’t take this advice to mean you should act like a moralless degenerate psychopath. It means that you have to do what’s in alignment with your values, regardless of the social or cultural pressure you might face.
- You’re gonna lose way more friends getting your life together than when you were a degenerate loser.
People get really uncomfortable when you change your life status; they don’t, and you’re no longer someone to look down on. A lot of people will root for you when you’re down, congratulate you when you get to their level, but then ghost you if you ever do better.
- Be highly selective with who you get implicated with.
This goes for every type of relationship. Romantic, business, friendship, familial, and everything in between. Because every person you interact with influences your reputation, for better or worse.
- Treat every person you have sex with as if they could become the mother or father of your child.
This will go a long way in keeping you from making dumb decisions that come back to haunt you. Even if you’re on the pill or have a wicked pull-out game, you might end up with someone crazy who can’t take no for an answer when you try to extricate yourself from them.
- No relationship is easy, but they shouldn’t be hard either.
Get rid of this fantasy that you’ll find the perfect person who meshes with every aspect of your personality. Think about what a relationship is for a second. It’s two people with different histories, perspectives, and experiences attempting to coexist. That will come with friction at times, but ultimately, you're with someone where the value of the good times significantly outweighs the value of the bad.
- The single most important trait for a long-term relationship is the ability to disagree respectfully.
More precisely, you and your person should be able to approach disagreements and problems with the goal of solving the problem. Not attacking one another.
- You can’t change people.
You can only inspire them to change by changing yourself. So if you get with someone and they have a stance you don’t like or a habit you can’t stand, don’t expect them to change their mind or stop doing whatever they were doing before you crossed their path.
- All of your emotions are valid and real; no one can take them from you, but that doesn’t mean others have to respect or acknowledge them.
And it doesn’t mean you should do something that will make you feel better at the expense of others.
- It’s ok to be disliked by people.
As long as a person doesn’t dislike you because you screwed some people over or hurt folks, don’t waste energy stressing about it or trying to change their mind. A person can dislike you for all types of reasons, and many of them don’t have anything to do with you directly.
- You don’t have haters.
You’re probably just an asshole. There’s a lot of talk about haters. Here’s my honest-to-goodness experience. If you discount people that you’ve actively wronged (intentionally or not), then most people don’t really care about you — for better or worse. They’re too busy making sure their own problems don’t eat them alive.
- Don’t try to save anyone.
The only exceptions are young children, but everyone else—teenagers included—you gotta distance yourself from sinking ship; otherwise, you’ll go down with it. If you see someone on a crash course with ruin and you try to change paths, you’re either gonna get dragged along with them, run over, or cussed out for thinking you know better.
- Sometimes the best way to break generational curses is to cut the old generation off and start a new one.
If you’re from a messed up family and you want your child’s future to be different—or, if you don’t have children, every interaction with them leaves you feeling worse—you gotta cut them off.
- Forgiving people doesn’t mean letting them back into your life.
And it definitely doesn’t mean forgetting what they did. It means they no longer have negative control over your emotions.
If you still get angry or you wish something bad would happen to them, you’re the only one carrying that poison and you think if you drink enough of it, they’ll start to suffer. No, you’re the only one who suffers.
They probably ain’t even thinking about you.
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