The Only Three Things That Determine Your Life
Most people spend their whole life getting only one right.
Everything you have right now — your job, your relationships, your income, where you live, how you carry yourself in a room — is a direct result of three things.
What you know. And who you know.
I’ll tell you the third at the end.
Think about that seriously for a second, because it sounds simple until you actually pull on the thread.
You know how to get dressed for work. You know how to do your job. You know how to talk to someone you’re interested in. You know how to navigate a city, negotiate a salary, read a room. Every single thing you’ve figured out how to do — no matter how small — expanded what was possible for you. And every single thing you still don’t know is a door you haven’t opened yet. A version of your life you haven’t accessed.
What you know has gotten you exactly here. The question worth sitting with is: if you knew more, where would you be?
Let me give you a small example that’s been stuck in my head.
I’ve been working out at the same gym in Roppongi since I moved to Tokyo. It’s fine. It does the job. But it’s not the kind of place that makes you excited to show up — limited equipment, limited variety, limited everything. I’d just accepted it as the best option in the area.
Then only just yesterday I’m in the locker room, making small talk with someone I’d seen around, and I mentioned offhand that it was basically the biggest gym around. He looked at me and very casually told me there was actually a new place that had just opened around the corner — bigger, better equipped (including Hyrox equipment), cleaner, the kind of gym that actually makes you want to train.
I had no idea it existed.
I walked over the next day, and just wow. It was everything he described. I’ve been training there ever since.
Now here’s what I want you to notice about that story — because it’s not really about a gym.
If I hadn’t been talking to that person. If I hadn’t asked the question. If I had just gotten dressed and left like I normally would — I’d still be at the old gym right now, still assuming it was the best I could do, still operating inside a smaller version of what was available to me.
The better gym existed the whole time. I just didn’t know about it.
This is how most of life works.
The job opportunity, the connection, the shortcut, the skill, the relationship, the city, the version of your life that’s genuinely better than the one you’re living — so much of it is sitting just at the edge of your reach. Not hidden. Not locked away behind some impossible barrier. Just one conversation, one question, one new person away from becoming real.
But you have to be in motion to find it. You have to be talking, asking, engaging, exploring. Because the universe is not small — it is infinitely large, infinitely abundant, full of more knowledge and opportunity and connection than any one person could ever exhaust in a lifetime. The question is never whether it’s out there. The question is how much of it you’re willing to go looking for.
Think of it like a puzzle. The pieces you’ve put together so far — everything you know, everyone you know — that’s your current picture of the world. And it’s real, and it’s yours. But the puzzle is enormous. Most of it is still face down on the table. And every new thing you learn, every new person you genuinely connect with, every room you walk into that’s slightly outside your comfort zone — that’s another piece flipped over. Another corner of the world revealed.
The more of the puzzle you can see, the more you understand what’s actually possible. And the more you understand what’s possible, the more value you can create — for yourself, for the people around you, for anyone whose life you touch.
That’s not abstract. That’s just how it works.
So often we forget this.
We fall into routines. We talk to the same people about the same things for years — sometimes decades. We stop asking questions because we’ve quietly decided we already know the answers. We shrink our world down to something manageable and call it stability.
But think about what that actually costs.
Every year spent in the same loop with the same people and the same information is a year where the puzzle doesn’t grow. Where the picture stays the same size. Where the opportunities that exist just outside your current reach stay exactly there — just outside your reach — because you never moved far enough to find them.
Progress isn’t just a nice idea. It’s the thing that gives life meaning. Growth, expansion, understanding more than you did yesterday — this is the work of being human. And it doesn’t require grand gestures or radical life changes. It requires something much simpler and much harder at the same time.
Stay curious. Keep moving. Talk to people. Ask questions. Walk into the rooms that make you slightly uncomfortable. Follow the threads that interest you even when you don’t know where they lead.
Because somewhere at the end of one of those threads is a door. And behind that door is a whole new set of experiences, opportunities, and versions of your life that you didn’t know existed.
The gym was there the whole time.
So is everything else you haven’t found yet.
But here’s the thing nobody talks about.
Knowing the gym existed meant nothing until I walked through the door.
That’s the third thing. And it’s the one that actually separates the people who talk about changing their lives from the people who do. Because you can know all the right things and be connected to all the right people — and still stay exactly where you are. Still go back to the old gym. Still have the same conversations. Still live inside the smaller version of your life because acting on what you know requires something that knowledge and connections alone can never give you.
It requires a decision.
What you know opens the door. Who you know shows you where the doors are. But what you do — that’s the only thing that actually walks you through one.
Most people get stuck at the first two and call it bad luck. They have the information. They have the network. They have the awareness that something better exists. And they still don’t move. Because knowing is comfortable. Doing is not.
So the real question — the one that determines everything — isn’t what you know or who you know.
It’s what are you going to do about it?