Simply Good Life — Life Lessons From 2020

Adam Egger
3 min readJan 1, 2021

Hi friends, here is your weekly dose of “Simply Good Life”, a newsletter that tries to make your day a little bit better and help you to grow personally and professionally. Enjoy!

Life Lessons From 2020

Today, I found an article where 1,273 people share their best life lessons from 2020. I love them all, but these three are my absolute favorites:

  1. You Only Really Know Who You Are When Everything Is Taken From You
  2. A Crisis Doesn’t Change People; It Amplifies Who They Already Are
  3. Most Things Are Both Good and Bad at the Same Time

These three sentences describe exactly how I felt during the two lockdowns here in Germany. What are your life lessons in 2020?

Make More Mistakes

I don’t ever make New Year’s Resolutions. I always begin with new habits whenever the time is right for them.

But I want to try more things out in 2021. Why? To make mistakes.

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.” ―Neil Gaiman, author

And here’s another quote that perfectly fits with the one above:

“Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.” ―Stephen King, horror author

So, let’s try some new things out, let’s fail, let’s be ok with failing.

Beauty

“Beauty is not hard to find, but easy to overlook” From Tim Ferriss’ interview with Jim Collins.

After listening to this podcast, I started taking pictures of tiny beautiful moments. Here’s a picture I took on my walk this week.

In our Simply Good Life group on WhatsApp, newsletter readers from India, Italy, UK, Germany, Austria, Israel, South Africa, the Netherlands, Ireland started sharing their beautiful and happy moments.

Join us there!

Darmstadt — December 2020

Make 2021 Better Than 2020

We are not in control of the world, but we are in control of ourselves. With these 12 small changes, we can be ready for anything. Life is more than the circumstances surrounding us. So let’s smile more, complain less

12 Simple Decisions to Make 2021 Better than 2020www.becomingminimalist.com

What is Success?

Here are two quotes that I often re-read to better judge if I’m on the right track in both my private and my professional lives.

Private — Optimize for Life

I don’t want to optimize for work, and I don’t want to optimize for family time. I want to optimize for life. I get one life and I don’t want to look back at ninety yelling at myself because I regret doing or not doing something. I always try to keep that end in mind. — Shane Parrish

Professional — Things that matter at work

“For me, success isn’t defined by revenue targets or big numbers; it’s defined by these questions: ‘Do I want to go to work tomorrow and do the same thing I did the day before? Am I enjoying this? Do I like the people I’m working with? Am I challenging myself intellectually and creatively?’ Those are the things that matter.” — Jason Fried

Have a fantastic day and a successful year 2021.

Whatever success means to you.

Adam

PS: Don’t forget to join the Simply Good Life group on WhatsApp. You’ll find some happiness there.

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Adam Egger

Helping with Innovation and Growth | Strategy and Innovation can be fun and simple | A minimalist living a good life.