This one is probably the most important rule to live by. It mostly encompasses basic idea behind all the original Ten Commandments, although with important distinction: It is not important how exactly you behave or what/who you believe in. Just try to behave in a way that would make at least your parents proud.

Not many people realize this fully - especially in the modern day and age we live in - but family and close relatives are the most important asset we get in life. If you are lucky enough and your family is around when you are alive, don't waste this opportunity. Your family will always stand beside you, so try to also stand beside them and at the very least don't disrespect them.

Most importantly: political opinions are not good enough reason to shun your family members. No matter how stupid you think their opinion may be. These people are your blood, and you may not need them right now but later in life you would regret the mistake of burning these bridges. I have seen many such cases where people disowned their own family members for the sole reason of (not) voting in certain way. Do not be that stupid.

This rule is extremely important nowadays. People don't realize this, but doomscrolling is extremely dangerous to your overall mental health.

Not only does this activity waste your time, it makes you actively stupid. It will lower your attention span and turn you into a human goldfish. There is nothing to be learned and nothing positive to be gained in this.

Approach short-form social media content as a spirit drink (40%+). It may be helpful for cleaning your head after a particularly hard time, but it must be used sparingly.

Do not ever allow your kids to fall into this hellhole. It does not matter how tired you may be after a days work, you must not allow this to happen.

There is too much information for us to effectively process. This is not your fault, but this is an inevitable outcome of the interconnected world that we live in. Although it is amazing to be able to have the knowledge of the whole humanity at your fingertips and "just a web search away", it is also very taxing on our mind. You can see any part of the world at a whim, you can even connect and see what is happening somewhere thanks to the online cameras almost everywhere around the world. But that does not mean you should.

You should shield your mind and use your attention as a resource. A finite resource, to be precise. You only have so much time in a day and so many fucks to give. So choose wisely. Do you use your time to argue with someone over some situation literally on the other side of the world or do you use it to improve your immediate situation or surroundings?

If you allow the worries of the whole world to get to you, you will lose your mind. Focus on what is really important and what affects people that are closest to you. Is it selfish to ignore the suffering of someone on the other side of the world? Maybe, but you as a person cannot police the world. Focus on things you can influence. Twitter likes and internet drama is not influencing anything.

Likes on social media are worthless. Even though it feels good to have strangers affirm our beliefs, it does not mean anything. There are over 8 billion people on the planet, do you think that posting a carefully crafted post on a social media that will get you a 10.000 likes means anything? No. It only serves your ego and nothing else.

And not only you have to focus on the "close problems", you also have to learn how to filter out content on the internet. In the age of AI it is almost impossible to distinguish between genuine human opinions and automatically generated noise. You have to learn to ignore most of the inputs, especially if they are related to a problem that is "remote" to you. But if you happen to see a cause that you'd like to give your energy to, be sure to form your own opinion. Don't blindly assume that other people will tell you the truth - it is rare for someone to tell you what they really think. People generally don't do that, they tend to say only the things that will get you to do what they think you should do.

Don't let anyone manipulate you. It does not matter if someone tries to appeal to your decency or your morale. At the end of the day, you have to face your decisions in life by yourself. If someone tries to persuade you to do something by making these kind of appeals (you are X if you don't do this where X can be lazy, hearthless, anything ending with -fobic etc.), you are fully in your rights to tell that person to fuck off. You don't have to answer to that person - with perhaps only few exceptions in life, these being primarily your closest family members and your life partner. But even with these you have to be careful and try to understand the intentions behind what they are saying.