I recently had a long conversation with a young man in his mid-20s who was unhappy with his standing in life—feeling behind, lost, without a clear vision for the future.

I think we can all see ourselves in him on some level: We've all been there at different times, whether in our teens, 20s, or beyond.

I'm certainly no stranger to that feeling—I felt it as recently as three years ago. I've been there. I get it.

The conversation caused me to reflect on the honest advice I'd give to that younger, lost version of myself to help expedite his journey to the other side.

Some of this is what I would consider tough love: Real, raw perspective on what is necessary and required to change your standing and find your way.

Here is my brutally honest advice to my younger self...

Happiness is found through service of others.

This simple story changed the way I think about happiness:

A teacher asked her students to write their names on a balloon and release them in her classroom. Thirty balloons jumbled around in the air. She then gave the students one minute to find the balloon that had their name on it. After a minute passed, none were able to find their balloon. The teacher then asked the students to take the first balloon they found and give it to the person whose name was on it. Within seconds, everyone had their balloon.

The teacher then explained: These balloons represent your happiness. Focus on your own happiness, and you may never find it. Focus on helping others find their happiness, and you will find yours as well.

You are never going to find happiness if you focus on yourself. No amount of nice things you buy will ever bring that lasting feeling of contentment.

Durable, lasting happiness and fulfillment comes from acting in service of others—on a micro family level, community level, or global level.

Advice is overrated (and action is underrated).

There's a famous story about Mozart that I love:

A young man asked Mozart how to write a symphony. Mozart replied, "You’re far too young to write a symphony." The young man then said, "What? You were writing symphonies when you were 10, and I’m 21." Mozart smiled and replied, "Yes, but I didn’t go around asking people how to do it."

You can read a lot of books and talk to a lot of people, but ultimately, you just have to figure things out for yourself. Advice gathering can quickly become procrastination in disguise if you let it.

Prioritize action: Take some advice, act on it, adjust accordingly.

It's not your lack of time or energy, it's your lack of desire that holds you back.

When things aren't going your way, it's easy to blame time or energy for the lack of success or progress.

But in my experience, whenever I’ve blamed these, I could really dig deeper and attribute it to a lack of desire.

We make time and energy for the things we really want:

If you have a vacation planned and need to make a 6am flight, you have no issue getting up at 3am to make it, because you have the desire.

Remember that the next time you say you can't wake up early to build your life because of a lack of time or energy...

Waking up early is as close to a life cheat code as you will find.

There's no such thing as a loser who wakes up at 5am. Why? Because it's hard, it requires intense discipline, and it creates evidence of your power and control over your world. That bleeds into every other area of life.

This is not to say that you have to wake up early to be successful, but it is to say that waking up early is the fastest way to rewire your brain—to remind yourself that you can do anything, that you are capable, that you are a winner.

Confidence is built, not born. Manufacturing evidence of your ability to do hard things is how you create confidence when you're feeling low. Wake up early and you'll start to see yourself in a new light.

Don't do your best, do what is necessary.

Doing your best is not the standard you want to set, because when you're not happy with your standing in life, your best is entirely subjective and likely based on self-limiting beliefs and stories that you tell yourself.

Don't do your best—do what is necessary, do what it takes.

Take the small things seriously, because small things become big things.

How you do one thing is how you do everything. The person who takes small things seriously earns the trust of those around them—they create value for everyone they encounter. That person will eventually be given bigger and bigger opportunities, the types of opportunities that dramatically change one’s trajectory. If you don’t take the small things seriously, you will never be trusted to take on the big.

Earlier this year, a young personal trainer at my gym told me he was starting to learn videography because it gave him energy. He started doing little bits of shooting for me on the side of his personal training job. We needed someone to shoot my son’s 2nd birthday, so I asked him. It would have been easy for him to half-ass it or say no—it’s a kid’s birthday party—but he showed up and treated it like he was filming to win an Oscar.

The work was just ok (he was still new to it!) but the effort and care was off the charts. He took the small things seriously, so I knew I could count on him for the big. Fast forward three months and I hired him full time on the team. He travels with me and he’s making significantly more than his old job doing things he loves.

Small things become big things.

Creating your 5-year plan is mostly a waste of time.

I have found that stress and anxiety are directly proportional to the amount of time you spend in the past or future. Creating a detailed 5-year plan is just asking for that to enter your life.

Plus, the best opportunities in life are asymmetric, nonlinear—you cannot plan for them. If you had asked me 5 years ago to map out my life 5 years in the future, I could have written down 100 scenarios, and not a single one would have been correct.

Set your direction—a general vision for your way of life in the future—and then focus your energy and attention on the daily actions that will compound positively over the next 100 days.

External competitiveness is a curse, internal competitiveness is a blessing.

The value of a competitive instinct depends on whether that competitiveness can be channeled internally.

External competitiveness—the desire to beat others—is a trait of the perpetually miserable.

Internal competitiveness—the desire to learn and grow relative to the version of you from last year—is a trait of the perpetually fulfilled.

Reliability will take you much further than brilliance.

You can get pretty damn far in life by just being someone that people can count on to show up and do the work.

Reliability is one of the most underrated traits. It's entirely free and doesn't require any talent or luck. Just show up, do the work, and get the job done.

In the short run, it is much harder to be exceptional than it is to be reliable. In the long run, being consistently reliable makes you exceptional.

Reliability is how you keep the ball in play, how you stay in the game long enough to let the magic of compounding do its thing.

You should probably take that leap of faith.

In my experience, regret from inaction is always more painful than regret from action.

Further, you tend to underestimate the degree to which the leap of faith is reversible. If you leave your traditional job to build your own thing and it fails, chances are you can go back to a traditional job (and with the valuable entrepreneurial experience in your new toolkit). Reframe it as a real world MBA.

Don't worry about making the perfect decision. Make a decision, then make it perfect through your actions.

You'll have a lot more success finding the things you're looking for if you start embodying them yourself.

"Don’t waste your time chasing butterflies. Mend your garden, and the butterflies will come." - Mario Quintana

This is something I've come to believe: The things you want most in life will come to you, but only when you're ready for them.

This applies to relationships, parenting, business, health, and more...

If you're feeling lost, I hope those 11 pieces of advice will help. I know they would have helped me when I was caught in the maze.

The beautiful thing about life is that no matter where you are today—no matter how deep in the darkness—you are always just one good decision away from being in a better place tomorrow.

Focus on that one decision in front of you. Don't worry about the hundreds or thousands of decisions that you still have to make to get to where you want to be—just focus on the next decision.

Just start walking.