As a human I evolved every second of my life. And I pray to God that I always evolve to be a better person, Inshaa Allah. I’ve been through the toughest parts of life like divorce, closing down my companies, losing my dad, but Alhamdulillah, it molded me into who I am today.

Here are the 34 lessons I’ve learned from living my life:

1. Change your look, change your life. I found out that I’m actually attractive. My body image issue was difficult to tackle. I always felt uglier than I actually am. It’s the results of many years of feeling like trash and not enough, resulted from old experiences that no longer serve me. I consciously try to find prove that I have worth as a woman, from people, friends, lover, and gradually I managed to convince myself. As I fix my self-confidence issue, I bloom, and many other aspects in my life flourished as well.
2. When shit happen, change your belief. When I broke up with someone because he’s cheating on me for example, I did not blame him for being an a**hole, instead I choose to believe that because I love him, I trust him 100%, including trusting his decision to mess around with somebody else. But, I don’t want to be part of that decision anymore. So, I let him go and find someone else who share the same values as me. Everbody’s happy.
3. Gewdammit what unlimited internet and unlimited access to read books can do! I never felt so free in my life to seek knowledge, as much as this year. Thank you Bolt Unlimited, Bookmate, Scribd, Storial!
4. Being authentic heals myself and others. I’ve been open about my life, including my personal life. It is of course a process, I can’t be as authentic and honest as Joel Buffer yet, I admire him for that, but at least I’ve been trying to be honest to myself. I hope everyone who reads my story find lessons from what I’ve been through.
5. Success is a habit. Your success muscles need exercise too. How many you see people who’s successful, would repeat his success in other areas in their life? Remember Elon Musk and his successful companies from PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX? He reads tons of books and make success a habit, starting from small victories building a company from his garage when he was a teenager, to billion dollars company like today.
6. Always give things to people before you’re asked and give it on time when needed by them. This is also something that needs practice. Compassion is the key. The ability to learn about people’s situation, find out what they need and GIVE without being asked. That is something I’m trying to do.
7. Meditation is not sitting silently trying to erase your mind, but focus on questions you have in your head and actively listening to answers and inspirations. I meditate every morning AND every time I need an answer. It is basically regulate your breath and calm your mind. You don’t need a cave to do that, after some time, you can do it while you sat down on your car stuck in traffic.

1. I have a chimp that is hungry inside my brain, ready to snap emotionally when he’s not fed. I must manage my chimp and give him bananas. I rarely snap, but when I do, it gets ugly. So I decided to be aware of the food of my chimp. If his patience meter is going red, I must immediately feed him with love and whatever else he needs. I can also distract him with something else, jokes or humor works like charm.
2. The only way to overcome fear is by doing massive actions. Writing a book is scary, you want it to be perfect because thousands of people will read it. But fear will get you nowhere. To overcome it, I just need to write. A lot. It works. I wrote 30 books since 2005 and wrote hundreds of articles.
3. You can accelerate serendipity. I believe when you’re in the flow state, it can get serendipitious. Like the right things will come and fall on your laps effortlessly. You can accelerate this by showing what you love and connects with like-minded people. Always be proud of yourself.
4. Big ideas are useful when it impacts people’s lives. Whenever I want to execute my ideas, I’d see how much it will impact people’s lives. In the society with lots of problems to solve, this seem to be the only option.
5. Appreciate what you love, make it a habit to be expressive. I’m big on being romantic and expressing yourself through words. I feel appreciated with words. It is nice to know someone love and care about you.
6. Know yourself, what’s your personality, attachment style and communication needs. Knowing all these things will lift a lot of headache and strained in your relationship. You understand yourself better and can handle yourself to interact with people. Do not expect people to understand you. You understand you. But let them know what you need too, so they will understand and know how to handle you with care. Just don’t expect anything from people.
7. Love means giving what they need. When people give you what you need, that means you’re loved. It’s the same thing, if you give people what they need, that means you love them. Even when this mean they need space, if you love them, you give it to them.
8. Art & creativity should transform and inspire change. I speak through my art, my writings, my poetry, my business, my life. When I die, this is my legacy for the humanity.
9. True love grows and bring out the best in you. Love means growth. Whether it’s painful grow or easy ones, you decide and experience it any way you want.
10. Cuts away everything’s that not you and you’ll be left with certainty of what you are. This is for people who doesn’t know what’s their passion is, try to quit anything that you’re NOT passionate about first. Then you’ll know what you’re passionate about.
11. Everything that happens in your life is a gift. If you treat it that way, you’ll spend the rest of your life excited to unwrap presents.
12. The things you know it’s true, you just do. If I ask you to throw the ball, you just do it. Because you know solidly that you can do it. So, why when I ask you to do what you love, you suddenly have lots of things to consider? You were born with love and full trust to life. What’s happen now?
13. Be conscious and aware of how you perceive yourself. Look at your text message, the way you speak to your friends. “I am tired, I’m dead, I’m so stressed, I’m busy, I’m an idiot.” Your brains record all that and they thought it was true. So, be aware of how you think of yourself. Caught yourself in the act and change your story.
14. Have a passion to be passionate. Every single one of people who just know me would think that I’m cold. It’s just my face. I’m flat like a kitchen table. But I’m working on it. I’m watching these bouncy people who look like they drank happy soda every hour. I’m working on it.
15. Guard your energy. Only use it to do productive things, it gets deflated, so use the very first batch carefully. Don’t spend your most productive time of the day to answer chats. Do your work first. Do not give your energy out to things and people that doesn’t worth your time, such as haters.
16. What are you world’s best at? What are the things that only you can do it best or at least better than anyone else? This is what I question to myself every day.
17. Spend more time with the best art. People in the past spend years to make an epic masterpiece, we only have patience for 2 minutes before getting distracted with another snap from a friend. If we can slow down and spend time with art, just surround ourselves with best art, we can get a lot of inspirations.
18. Fear comes as a reaction of something you believe is true. Let’s say I was afraid that my lover would cheat on me, this caused strained into the relationship because I was so possessive. That only happen because I believe that I’m so suck, that he will find somebody better. If I can love myself enough to believe that I’m an amazing person to be with, I will be more relaxed, and he will feel more comfortable in the relationship that he won’t need somebody else to give it to him.
19. You attract what you focus on. It’s Quantum Physics, it’s a law, it’s science. Matters exist when it is observed. The key of manifestation is knowing and paying attention to what you want.
20. Honor yourself. Celebrate your talents, victories, prosperity, personal growth and accomplishment.
21. We needs to focus on this 3 areas to be a better Muslim: worship, knowledge and service. You do the prayers, read Qur’an, Hadith, Islamic books and help people in need.
22. Prioritize like crazy. You can only think one thing at a time. Do the things that you hate but must be done first. Do the thing that occupy your mind first. Do the hardest thing that needs major focus first. Your day will be amazing after that.
23. Sacrifice your comfort zone. The real meaning of sacrifice is giving up lower vibration to receive higher. If you can let go sooner, you will get the better reward coming up next.
24. 5 things that matter in life: growth, happiness, abundance, significance, meaning. Always invest in your personal growth. Last year I wrote Denny Santoso’s book, and from him I learned to invest in myself. Buy that books, go to that seminars, take that courses, even when it costs you money. That’s the best investment you can ever do.
25. Seek this every day: experience, growth, contribution. What can I experience today? How can I grow myself today? What contribution I can make to society today?
26. Write gratitude journal like your life depends on it. I usually write it every morning, now I write it every time I find something to be grateful for. And before I know it, now I suddenly have MORE things to be grateful for.
27. I am enough.

Fun fact: I wrote this post with 1653 words for two hours in traffic on the way to work.

Thanking Allah, The Supreme, The Love, The Light, The Guide, The Merciful, The Kind and Powerful, for my beautiful life. Alhamdulillah.

Hope you have a wonderful day.