100 Laws of Life so You Don't Screw Your Life Up Like I Did

They say wisdom comes with age. For me, it came with enough mistakes to fill a book—and maybe, if I’m honest, a list. My friends used to joke I was living proof that life didn’t come with an instruction manual. Every wrong turn, every burned bridge, every regret: it all added up until, one slow Sunday morning, I began to write them out. I called them my Laws of Life, the hard-earned rules I wished someone had handed me before I stumbled into adulthood.

Number one: Never ignore your gut, even if it whispers. I’ll never forget the time I invested in a business because everyone else was excited. My instincts told me to walk—my ego told me to stay. That decision cost me three years, and most of my savings.

Number twelve: Friends are the family you choose—so choose them wisely. The night my old car left me stranded outside a diner at 2 a.m., it wasn’t my siblings who answered the phone. It was Caleb, the buddy who never asked questions—just showed up with jumper cables and coffee.

Then there was rule twenty-nine: Don’t chase happiness; build it from small things. I spent a decade running from city to city, job to job, convinced the next move would finally make me content. It took a morning on a cracked back porch, drinking cheap coffee as the sun rose, to realize happiness is built quiet, brick by brick.

Number forty: Learn to say no. Say it often. I overcommitted, thinking saying yes made me indispensable, likeable, irreplaceable. Instead, I found myself exhausted—and strangely invisible. I learned the hard way that boundaries aren’t walls. They’re the fences that protect your garden from being trampled.

Seventy-one: People’s memories are short—don’t let shame make yours longer than it needs to be. I spent years reliving one disastrous breakup, convinced everyone remembered it as vividly as I did. They didn’t.

And perhaps the last law—the one I wrote as the sun dipped low, my list nearly finished: Forgive yourself even when no one else does. Life, I’ve realized, isn’t a test you pass by not making mistakes. It’s a lesson in getting up, again and again, even after the worst stumbles.

There are a hundred more, scrawled on napkins, in half-filled journals, on the backs of receipts. But at their heart, these laws are nothing more than reminders—we’re all stumbling through, trying to make the best of what we have. If you’re listening, let my bruises be your blueprint. Write your rules, and keep going. Even if you screw up, there’s always another morning, another page—a bit more wisdom for the journey ahead.