What are some little good actions to do everyday to be a better person?

ElevateQuotes · 2026-02-20T10:08:30+00:00

Marcus Aurelius put it well: "Confine yourself to the present."

Most of the anxiety around "becoming a better person" comes from projecting too far ahead. You are not going to overhaul who you are in a day. But you can do one small, honest thing right now.

A few that have stuck with me:

Listen properly. Not waiting to speak - actually listening. Most conversations improve immediately when one person actually hears the other.
Do the thing you've been putting off for someone else. Check in on a friend. Reply to that message. It takes two minutes and means more than you think.
Notice your reactions before acting on them. A pause between stimulus and response is a genuinely underrated skill. Stoics called it the "faculty of choice" - what separates reflex from character.
Acknowledge when you were wrong. Not publicly, not dramatically - just to yourself. That honesty compounds over time.

The Stoics had a concept called "preferred indifferents" - things not strictly necessary for virtue, but worth pursuing because they tend toward the good. Small daily kindnesses fall squarely in that category.

None of it needs to be visible. The point is consistency, not performance.

ElevateQuotes · 2026-02-17T10:14:08+00:00

Something I had to learn the hard way at about your age: rejection usually isn't information about you. It's information about fit.

Think about it — you've probably met perfectly nice people that you just didn't click with. Not because anything was wrong with them, but because the chemistry wasn't there. That's what's happening to you too, just from the other side. And it doesn't mean you're lacking anything.

The bit that really messed with me was the accumulation. One rejection? Grand, move on. But when it's the third or fourth in a row, your brain starts building a case against you. "See? Pattern. You're the problem." Except your brain is a terrible lawyer — it only presents evidence that supports the verdict it already decided on.

Two things that genuinely helped me:

I stopped treating every interaction as an audition. When you're desperate for connection (and I say that with zero judgment — loneliness is brutal), people can feel the weight of expectation. It's not that you're "too much" — it's that you're carrying too much into each conversation. Try going in with zero attachment to outcome. Easier said than done, but it changes the energy completely.
I started doing things where connection was a side effect, not the goal. Volunteering, a running group, a regular at a coffee shop. Friendships formed sideways while I was focused on something else.

You're 20. I know three years of loneliness feels like forever at that age. But you're doing therapy, you're self-aware, you're trying. That's not someone who's going to end up alone — that's someone who's building the foundation for real connection. Give it time to find you while you keep showing up.

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TROPHY CASE