Wish you had a roadmap for your 20s? Ryan Hanley delivers the brutal truth in this video, sharing 17 harsh lessons he learned the hard way. Forget sugarcoating—these are real-life insights designed to align your life for success and help you navigate the inevitable challenges ahead. Ryan cuts through the noise and delivers a motivation-packed session, drawing from his own experiences and a deep understanding of psychology. He's not just sharing theories; these are hard-learned truths that will reshape your mindset forever. Life isn't fair, and Ryan doesn't pretend it is. He lays out the stark realities you need to face head-on to achieve personal growth. He reveals what they don't teach you in school, emphasizing how your mindset shapes everything. Here's a glimpse of the hard-learned truths Ryan shares: The reality that success requires more than just good intentions. The importance of facing your fears instead of avoiding them. How crucial it is to take responsibility for your own actions. That personal growth is painful, but necessary. The fact that most people will not support your dreams. This video is a wake-up call, a dose of reality, and a powerful guide to navigating the crucial decade of your 20s. Prepare to have your mindset reshaped and your path clarified. Thanks to Mando for sponsoring this episode—use code 'RYAN' at shopmando.com for 40% off their starter pack, and stay fresh and confident with their top-notch odor control products! 📚 Interested in mastering sales? Check out Ryan's new sales course, "Master of the Close" at https://www.masteroftheclose.com 🎯 Takeaways: Focus determines who you become Mental health is ongoing work Embrace unfair realities 💬 Sound Bites: "Focus determines who you become; consistent focus boosts productivity." "Life's challenges bring true purpose and fulfillment." "Courage to be disliked brings true appreciation." 📖 Chapters: 00:00 - Introduction 00:40 - START 02:13 - What You Focus On Is Who You Become 05:34 - Life is not fair 08:02 - Operate in Reality 09:50 - You Are Going To Lose Friends 12:21 - Your Health Is Not A Luxury 14:16 - Mando 17:14 - Mental Health Is A Practice 19:52 - There Are Seasons To Life 23:15 - Give No F*cks - Lesson 9: 24:19 - You Cannot Improve Everything All At Once 25:49 - Be Proud Of Your Faith 27:37 - Consistency is the Killer Flex 28:57 - There Is No Path 31:57 - It’s Either Hell Yes or No 32:56 - Life Is Not Supposed To Be Easy 34:59 - Double Into Your Strengths 36:32 - Have The Courage To Be Disliked 39:01 - Create More Than You Consume 40:43 - You Are Always To Blame 📌 𝗙𝗢𝗟𝗟𝗢𝗪 𝗠𝗘 𝗢𝗡: Website: https://go.ryanhanley.com/ Course Page: https://masteroftheclose.com/ Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ryan-hanley-show/id1480262657 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5AZFuTiQsgS9hMQDDdtlOr?si=98432b7806534486 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryan_hanley
Chapter 1: What lessons did Ryan Hanley learn in his 20s?
Today I'm going to share 17 harsh lessons that I wish I knew in my 20s. As of recording this, I am 43 going on 44. I'll be 44 in two weeks. And as birthdays tend to do, you reflect on where you are, what are the ideas that are driving you as a person today, and you think back to where you came from. And I did not come from a household, from a family that taught these lessons.
We came from a small town. My mother was a receptionist. My father was a laborer. They were great parents, showed me tons of love. But we were just trying to get by day to day. And I didn't have a playbook coming out of my teens into my 20s that allowed me to be successful.
So what you're going to learn today are directly lessons that come directly from the beats of my own career, from trying things and failing and trying and failing and learning each step of the way on how to get better at what I do, how to get better as a person and how to set my life up for the success that I enjoy today. And I want to share those with you because That's what we do here.
If you see a lesson, hear a lesson that makes sense or doesn't make sense, something that you disagree with or you just like us to expand on, leave it in the comments below. I'd like to know which lesson hits you the hardest, which one maybe you struggle to implement in your life. Leave those comments in the YouTube comment section. respond to every one of them. I read every one of them.
If you're listening to the audio podcast, Spotify, Apple, wherever, make sure you head over to YouTube and leave your comments there. And I will make sure that we dig into those. And if there's any that warrant expansion in a future episode, we'll make sure we get that done as well.
okay lesson number one what you focus on is who you become this is a core mantra to my life it is number one for a reason it is a defining principle in who i am and how i run my life because three years ago i was diagnosed with hyperactive bipolar which means at any given moment i am bouncing between manic and hyper manic which means at all moments of the day i am out over my skis going 100 miles an hour mentally
I have had to build into my life systems, processes, mantras, et cetera, that allow me to stay focused because anything that doesn't drop a massive amount of dopamine into my system immediately gets disregarded. And for a long time, I thought that this was just who I was. I was scatterbrained or I was high energy or whatever label or moniker you wanted to put on it.
The lesson came in the form of understanding the true impact of my inability to stay consistently focused on a single topic without these systems or processes in place. It takes on average our brain 23 minutes to regain full focus on a topic when we switch our focus. So if you are working on a major project and get distracted easily by focus,
a Netflix show you want to watch or video games or text messages or, you know, scrolling through Instagram or Tik TOK. And then you try to come back to that major project. It is going to take your brain 23 minutes before you regain your full focus. That is a massive loss in output and productivity.
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Chapter 2: How does focus influence personal development?
I want to create incredibly valuable content like what we're watching right now, and I want to be physically fit. Additionally, I am hyper-focused on being a present father in my children's lives. Therefore, I time block every event of theirs that I want or need to go to and make sure that if something else comes up, I am scheduling around those moments.
Because priority number one in my life before anything else that I do is being present for my children. So if I want to be a present dad, a high performer and physically fit, the only way to guarantee that that is a reality is to time block. There are many other systems and processes that I put in place.
I've done some other episodes for the show that you can kind of scroll back through on focus if you want more information on those. And if you would like to know some of the other systems and processes that I use, just leave a comment below and I'm happy to share those with you as well. Lesson number two, life is not fair.
This is one of the major issues that I have, particularly with individuals who come to me and ask questions. They'll say, I should have gotten this promotion. It's not fair. I should be selling more in this product that I created. It's not fair, right? Why does this person, you know, this person started with money. I didn't, I had to bootstrap.
This person has some particular experience that allows them to gain more attention. That's not fair. Sorry. None of that matters, right? Like life is not fair. Get over it. The minute you stop thinking in terms of fair, you can start focusing on the things that you need to do to reach your goal. Fair is just a distraction. Going back to lesson one, this idea of fair.
Do not assume that anything is going to be fair. And the flip side of that coin is you should not act in a fair way. If you have a competitive advantage, you should leverage that competitive advantage. I don't mean screwing people. I don't mean lying. I don't mean bait and switch offers. That's not what I'm talking about.
If you're an incredible copywriter who can get people to click through or to buy a thing, but then the thing is terrible, that is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about competitive advantages you may have. You may not have kids, which gives you a massive advantage.
advantage over people that do simply by the amount of time that kids take out of your life leverage that advantage right you may have you may come from a family with money and be able and have reserves that you can pull from to seed a business leverage that competitive advantage There's nobody, nobody who matters cares what competitive advantages you come to the game with.
They only respect your execution of the thing you're trying to do. So do not expect life to be fair. Additionally, do not play too fair. If you have a way to step out ahead of your competition that is unfair, but fair, hopefully morally okay leverage that unfairness because the world the universe isn't fair so just remove fair as an idea from your your mindset and just assume everything is unfair
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Chapter 3: Why is accepting life's unfairness crucial?
And they're fun to have as friends at that moment in your life.
But as you mature and you move out of that stage of your life and you want to become more professional and you want to work more in your business and you want to work more in your physical fitness, those friends who want to go and eat crappy food and drink tons of beers, they might not be aligned with this new version of you who doesn't want to do those things and certainly don't want to do those things as often.
It is okay to lose friends who no longer align with where you are in the current stage of your life. Because I promise you, you will backfill those friends with new people who do align with you. And what I've found over the course of my life is that those new friends are often deeper, richer, more meaningful relationships. Lesson number five. Your health is not a luxury.
You have to focus on your health. American society is fat as foals. I recently had a guest on the show who shared that 80% of Americans have metabolic syndrome, which essentially means they either have diabetes or they're overweight or they have some other form of
debilitating issue that keeps them from being max energy every day and in order to be the most successful the most purpose-driven meaningful happy version of yourself you want to be at max energy every day and the only way to do that is to focus on your health it is not health is not a luxury and you may be saying well Ryan you don't understand I just started a startup and I don't have time time block in
physical fitness into your day. Time block in eating a healthy lunch if that's what you need to do. If it's that hard for you, literally create a 15-minute calendar invite only to yourself that says eat a salad or whatever that healthy thing is that you need to eat, right? Or time block in intermittent fasting if that's something that you like to do.
Time block in the health and wellness things that are important to you being max energy. Because that startup that you're using as an excuse for not going to the gym, you're going to fade. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to procrastinate. You're going to get lazy because you're not going to be at max energy.
Being at max energy, which means focusing on your health, is a core part of a startup. This is something no one talks about in the entrepreneurial space. Your health is part of the startup because if you're not at max energy, if you have brain fog as the founder, how are you going to make the decisions?
How are you going to do the work that's necessary to get that startup past startup mode into escape velocity? It's not going to happen. And I'd like to put a particular point on building strength. And this goes for men and women, not a fitness guru, although I've had many on the show in the past. So you can go back and look at those episodes, strength training one to three times a week, you know,
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Chapter 4: What does it mean to operate in reality?
feeling good and confident in whatever you have to do in that second half of your day. No one wants to stink. No one wants to be around someone that stinks. Mando is your odor control partner. Use this sound code Ryan at checkout shop Mando.com. Okay. Let's get back to the episode. All right. Lesson number six, mental health is a practice.
I'm going to go back to thinking about this from the standpoint of like a startup founder, because I know a lot of you are in business that listen to this show or are considering side hustles, etc. If you're not, if your mental health isn't in a good place, it's almost impossible to get these things done. Right. This was a hard lesson for me because I just always thought I had good mental health.
Until really bad shit started to happen, like getting fired from a job that I loved. I had a startup that I worked on and launched, and it just didn't go anywhere. And the reason it didn't go anywhere wasn't because the product was bad or because I had bad strategies and tactics. It's because I wasn't here, right? I didn't have the mental health skills. to push through those hard times.
I started having all these limiting beliefs, all these negative thoughts started running through my brain. I hadn't yet fully understood how the voice in your head isn't you and how that voice is often not helping you move forward in your life. And there's all these little aspects of mental health that, you know, we can dive into this in future episodes as well.
We've talked a lot about it on the show in the past. We will continue to because this is such an important topic to our success. Mental health is a practice. So all that being said, taking out the specifics of mental health, I want to focus on this idea of practice because this is the lesson. You don't go see a counselor or therapist one time and get fixed. That's not the way it works.
The best advice that's ever been given to me by a mentor was this. Find a counselor, make a recurring meeting with them every two weeks for the rest of your life, and just consider it a life expense because mental health is a practice, right? It is about consistency. It's about doing the work. It's about tiny incremental gains.
It's about learning how not to react, how to manifest things in your life, how to reinforce good ideas, good thoughts, good beliefs, right? That mental health is something we need to constantly be working on. And early in my life, I may have a problem, talk to someone, feel like I'm fixed, and then that same exact thing happens again. Because I didn't consistently work on the concept.
I didn't consistently work to get better. I didn't see it as a practice. I saw it as like, you know, fixing the leg of a chair that breaks, right? You fix it once and you're back in business. That's not the case with our mental health. It is something we will be working on our entire lives.
And if you truly want to be successful in whatever it is that you're trying to do, we must focus on our mental health and we must think of it as a practice, not as something we can patch and fix and move on. Lesson number seven, there are seasons to life.
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Chapter 5: Why will you lose friends in your 20s?
for bad seasons when you're in a good season what does that mean it means that early in your life you most likely will not be making the amount of money you want to be making you most likely will not have the network that you want you most likely so what does this idea of seasons actually mean it means everything has a season again going back to our analogy with the startup founder
The first season when you create a startup and launch that business is going to be you grinding 10, 12, 16 hours or more a day. It's just the nature of getting a business up off the ground. And it's going to burn you out unless you can understand that that is a season that you just have to get through.
You just have to get through that season from launch to escape velocity where you are grinding every minute of every day. It's all encompassing. Maybe you're letting relationships go. Maybe you're...
struggling in other places because you have to get through this season of getting your business to a place where you can move on to the next season, which is starting to bring in employees, starting to bring in new systems, new processes, maybe tools that you can afford at that point.
They're gonna help you systematize, build process, build consistency in your business that will allow you to work less hours, but reap more benefit. It's a season, right? You have seasons of your marriage. You have seasons of your relationship with your children. You have seasons with friends. You have seasons with everything.
And framing where you are as a season allows you to emotionally rationalize the things that you're doing
at this moment so that you can set yourself up to move beyond that season to where you ultimately want to be for so long i didn't understand this concept this is one of the this is one of the lessons that i've learned very recently in my life i would launch businesses and get so frustrated by the just constant unending grind knowing that that was what was required
but not understanding that someday that was going to have to turn. And I would just keep grinding and keep grinding, even though we would be hiring people.
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Chapter 6: How important is health for success?
And even though we would be bringing in new tools and building new systems, I would keep grinding and grinding until I had someone literally grabbed me and shake me at a conference when I was complaining about this and say, this is just a season move on. When I started to research this topic, I started to understand what they meant and it gave me some emotional release. It allowed me to say, okay,
I'm in this grinding season. How do I move on to the next one? And that thought gave me the light at the end of the tunnel to realize that I hadn't given up a corporate job to become an entrepreneur, to only work twice as many hours, twice as hard without seeing the benefit. And that this concept of seasons was a game changer for me.
And I highly recommend you dig into it and spend some time thinking about what season you're currently in and where you want to get to. Lesson number eight, give no fucks. I have a little wood sculpture that one of the audience members here has made for me when I talked about this concept the first time on the show. Right here, made for me right here. Thank you, Gordon, for making this for me.
It's right here. Sits right back over my shoulder. Reminder every day to give no fucks. And what that means is believe in yourself, not in the opinions and expectations of others. If someone's got a comment, let them have a comment. Use it as a data point.
Use every comment, every negative piece of feedback that you get, every you don't have the resources, you don't have the knowledge, you'll never, you don't have enough, you're not capable. Whatever those negative things are that people put into your world, Use them as data points, but ultimately give no fucks.
If you believe in your path, believe in your path, push forward, and that's all that matters. It's the only way to get to where you want to go because your path is your path. GNF, give no fucks. Lesson number 10, you cannot improve everything all at once.
Pick one thing, master that thing, execute that thing, improve that thing, systematize that thing, build that thing, then move on to the next thing. The more projects you have going on at the same time, the less successful you will be in any one of those projects and the longer all of those projects will take to complete.
The reality, again, going back to a previous lesson around living in reality, is that we can't always only have one thing going on in order to move our business forward. However, we can have one primary focus. And if we... give as much or the majority of our focus to one thing at a time, we will be the best that we can be at that thing.
We will get it done the fastest and we'll be able to move on and then do the same for the next major priority task, et cetera, that we have to achieve. But too often, we hit this, all of a sudden, I want to become a better person or I want to be a successful entrepreneur. And we put 10, 15, 20 different priorities on our table and try to execute them all at once.
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Chapter 7: What practices support mental health?
Now they're, you know, a political expert, whatever consistency. What does that person do over and over and over and over again? with value, with passion, with energy that provides value, right? That's the killer flex is I'm so passionate, engaged in this topic. I'm so excited about this topic.
I want to create value on this topic so much that I come back over and over and over and over and over again. That consistency is the killer flex. Lesson number 13, there is no path. There's no path. Like this whole idea that you can buy a course and follow someone's seven step funnel process and make all this money is, you know, maybe in the short term, but there is no path.
right your path is going to be yours it's going to have a little bit of of this and it's going to have you know some some pieces from over here and you know you're going to hit this roadblock that no one else hit and you're going to have to skirt it in a unique way and then maybe the next three steps you could actually follow someone but then you know your path's going to diverge because the economy changes the market changes the technology changes there is no path and the core
idea behind there is no path is that the winners are adaptable when necessary and rigid when it's required. Walking the line between adaptability and rigidity is what's going to make you successful. It's the entrepreneur journey. It's the success journey, whatever that is, right?
Whether you're trying to be a better partner, father, whatever the thing is that you want to become, there isn't a path. Because if you're trying to be a better parent, right, your kids are so unique that you can't just do what everyone else does. They're going to have different needs, different desires, different things that they're interested in, different energy levels.
They're going to have different, you know, just ways of talking to you, even inside your own family that, you know, sure you can read books and get little tips and all this kind of stuff. But ultimately, with this idea of there is no path is accumulate mantras, accumulate value structures, and then be able to pull them off the shelf as needed in the moments in which they're required.
But to be so rigid to one plan is going to cause you issues and to always flex and adapt. is also not always going to be the right path so it's walking that line between when to stick to your guns and when to adjust course that's the game of life and for those of us that believe we can find someone who's done who's lived a life that we would like to mimic and then to strictly follow their path
is going to cause more problems than it creates opportunities, right? Learn from people, research, reading biographies, best-selling tried-and-true books from people. I have a friend who says, only read dead authors, right? Only read people whose books have lasted the test of time. Okay, take in these inputs as much as you can,
and create a shelf of of systems of ideas of core concepts of methodologies mantras and then as needed as the situation requires the skill is to pull from them and make your path yours because we're not interested in the person who followed the path of someone else we're interested in the people who created their own path and whatever that looks like. Lesson number 14, and this is a short one.
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Chapter 8: How can you navigate different seasons of life?
And creation doesn't always just mean content. It can mean putting effort back into the product you're building or into the work that you do or whatever it is that's important to you. But if we are not creating more than we consume, right, you will find that doing any creation becomes harder and harder and harder because we start living in the lives of other people.
We start living in the thoughts of other people and our own unique ideas start to become corrupted. It's a delicate balance. You have to be very careful.
But if you can make sure through time blocking, going all the way back to our first lesson, through time blocking, that you are creating more than you're consuming, you will find that your output from creation will continue to go up and up and up. But if that is out of balance, you will never be able to create enough to hit escape velocity.
so we have reached our last lesson technically lesson number 19 and this is in my opinion if not the most important lesson it is a top three lesson in this list and this goes for anybody who is a leader of anything leader of your family you are a leader of yourself you could be a leader of a company of a community group of sports team if you hold a leadership position in any capacity including yourself you are always to blame
You are always to blame as the leader. Whether that is true or not, you are always to blame. Whether you're the one that did the thing or not, you as the leader always to blame. You should always take the blame and you should own it. There is nothing that destroys a team, that destroys a group more than when the leader passes blame.
It is the unfortunate reality of the position that you are always to blame, right? The buck stops with at the top. The buck stops with the leader. The buck stops with you. You are always to blame. And if you can adopt a mindset that no matter what happens in your business, in your family, in your community group,
on your team, whatever it is that you are a leader of, that you are always the one to blame, then you own the solution and you can execute making sure that that thing does not happen again. But if you pass the buck, it creates bitterness, resentment. People start to stop listening to you. They stop respecting you. They stop supporting you.
But when you always take the blame, when you remove the blame from the people who are doing the things in support of your mission, of your goal, and you take on that blame and then you support them and making sure it doesn't happen again, they will run through fucking walls for you. They will run through walls because what they know. is they are operating from a place of safety.
And I don't mean safe spaces in the woke regard. I mean, from a place where they can make decisions, they can execute, they can have some level of autonomy to do their job and be great at what they do without always feeling like the guillotine is over the top of their head and that one mistake is going to come down and crush whatever it is that they're doing.
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Chapter 9: Why is it essential to give no fucks?
You're removing that fear that one mistake is going to kill their career or kill their opportunity. You're saying, look, I know you're going to make mistakes, and as long as I feel like you're doing your best, I am always to blame. I'm always to blame.
And if there is a systemic problem in the business in terms of an individual or there is someone on the team, you can address that privately through coaching, through performance improvement plans, through mentorship. through training, but there is nothing worse than listening to a leader, get on a call, have something happen, and then pushing that blame on someone else.
It just absolutely destroys that group, that company, that team, that community organization, destroys it.
if you want a leadership position understand that everything is your fault and you are to blame and you are the one that needs to figure out how to solve that problem and if you live that life i promise you you will start to be surrounded by people who will run through walls for you who will love you who will care not just about their own success not just about the company's success but about your personal success and that
my friends, is how great things happen. I love you for being here. I hope these 17 slash 19 lessons added some value, that you found some things in here that you can start to work on. Leave comments, questions, thoughts here on YouTube. This is the way.
It is 3 a.m.
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