The world is becoming AI-driven, productivity-obsessed, and louder by the day—
yet most people still don’t know how to actually live.

We chase success as if it’s a location.
We chase meaning as if it’s a prize we’ll one day earn.
And in that chase, we forget the one thing that used to come naturally:
being.

When we’re kids, being is enough.
We play, we explore, we follow our curiosity.
We are fully here.

Then, somewhere around high school, the pressure hits.
Suddenly “success” becomes the goal—and the adults around us, who are often disconnected from their own aliveness, start telling us how to reach it.

We’re herded toward what looks good, not what feels true.

But what if the young ones—the teenagers and early adults—actually know more about how to live than we do?
What if we are the ones who forgot?

Because when you’re chasing happiness, or meaning, or “enoughness,” you’re already running away from your own wholeness.

You were born with the blueprint.
You just got talked out of it.

Mavis Karn’s It’s That Simple: A User’s Manual for Human Beings is one of the most important reminders I’ve ever read—for both adults and teens.

It’s not a “self-help” book. It’s a recalibration.

Mavis, a counselor with 45 years of experience working with everyone from incarcerated youth to professional athletes, originally wrote a letter to her students called “The Secret.”

It began:

“I have a secret to tell you. Nobody meant to keep it from you—it’s just that it’s been so obvious, people couldn’t see it… like looking all over for the key that’s already in your hand.”

That letter became this book.
And the secret is this:

“You are already a whole, perfect person. You are not damaged, incomplete, or flawed. You already have everything you need to live a wonderful life. You are missing nothing.”

Read that again.

There’s one story in the book that lives rent-free in my mind—Letter Three: A Story About Buses.

A girl spends her life riding random buses because that’s what she’s seen everyone else do. Her family always rode buses, so she assumes that’s just what life is: endless motion, no direction.

Then one morning, a stranger asks,

“Why are you always riding the buses?”

She answers,

“Isn’t that what buses are for?”

The man smiles:

“No. They’re for getting you where you want to go.”

And everything changes.

She realizes she’s been spending her energy on rides that weren’t hers—riding every bus just because others were doing it.

She begins to notice that she can choose:

That awareness changes everything.
She has more energy. More clarity.
Life feels lighter. Fuller. Truer.

When you ride buses that aren’t yours—relationships, jobs, expectations—you drain your system.
Your nervous system stays on high alert.
Your biochemistry shifts toward stress and depletion.
Your vitality leaks.

But when you hop off with gusto, something else happens:
Your entire biology reorganizes around freedom.
Your cells feel it. Your body hears it.
That’s when healing begins—not because of a supplement or a protocol, but because you finally stopped betraying yourself.

That’s the genius of this book.
It reminds you of what you’ve always known.

So the next time life feels heavy, ask yourself:

“Is this my bus—or someone else’s?”

Then breathe. Step off. Walk your own way.