These aren't rules I invented.
They're things I learned by doing the opposite for long enough to feel what the opposite costs. Devoid of any philosophical connotations, and grounded more in how to operate in reality.
It is pointless to prove, through effort and availability, that you matter. Respect is directly tied to scarcity. If your presence is taken for granted, your best course of action is absolute withdrawal.
In any context, romantic, professional, social, the posture of asking always places you slightly beneath the person you're asking. You are requesting entry. You are making their response to you the variable that determines your next move. Instead, offer them a bridge. Give them your number. Don't ask for theirs. Express your interest clearly and then step back. The people who walk across the bridge you built are the people who actually wanted to reach you.
Build your body. Especially your posture. Your body is the physical expression of your relationship with yourself.
Address disrespect at the first sign. Never the second. If you let a spark slide because you want to avoid awkwardness, you are actively signing the permission slip for the forest fire that follows.
Being radically honest from day one burns away the people who cannot handle your reality, saving you months of wasted time and performance.
Leave rooms where you constantly have to prove your worth. Refuse to sit at a table where you are constantly expected to perform for a crumb of acceptance. The right rooms don't require this.
Save money before people know you're making it. Keep the gap between what you have and what you show deliberately wide for as long as you can manage it.
Never correct someone who thinks you are less competent, less wealthy, or less intelligent than you actually are. Let them enjoy their delusion of superiority.
There is a specific type of exhaustion that comes from trying to maintain a relationship where only one person is doing the work of sustaining it. Where you're the one who reaches out first, make the plans, follow up, keep the thing alive through effort because without your effort it would quietly die. That is not a relationship. That is a project. And the most important question about any project is whether it's worth the investment.
The people who brought you into this world, who watched your earliest struggles, are operating on a finite timeline that is winding down every single day. Do not let your ambition or your daily distractions make you blind to their aging. Take the pictures, record the videos, and capture the data of your parents' existence while they are still here.
The last one is the most urgent. It is also the only one on this list that cannot be started over from scratch if you begin too late.
Start with the one that landed.
Anchor yourself in reality, enforce your boundaries, build in silence, and protect your sanity with everything you have.
— Marcus | Stern Stoic