"You don't choose the cards. You are responsible for how you play them."
After re-reading David Goggins' Can't Hurt Me and Never Finished, this is probably the idea that stayed with me the most.
Perfect circumstances are fiction.
There will always be something that could have been better - more time, more money, better timing, better opportunities, fewer problems. Some of those things are genuinely outside of your control.
But at some point, they also become excuses.
I'm 34 now, and I increasingly feel that I simply have to do better with what I have.
Not because everything is fair. Not because hard work magically fixes everything. But because waiting for a better hand doesn't change the one already in front of you.
You make the best of imperfect circumstances.
You don't choose the cards.
You are responsible for how you play them.