You know how you can hear something a hundred times in a hundred
different ways before it finally gets through to you? The ten truths listed
below fall firmly into that category – life lessons that many of us likely
learned years ago, and have been reminded of ever since, but for whatever
reason, haven’t fully grasped.
This, my friends, is my attempt at helping all of us, myself
included, “get it” and “remember it” once and for all…
1. The average human life is relatively short.
We know deep down that life is short, and that death will happen
to all of us eventually, and yet we are infinitely surprised when it happens to
someone we know. It’s like walking up a flight of stairs with a distracted
mind, and misjudging the final step. You expected there to be one more stair
than there is, and so you find yourself off balance for a moment, before your
mind shifts back to the present moment and how the world really is.
LIVE your life TODAY! Don’t ignore death, but don’t be afraid of
it either. Be afraid of a life you never lived because you were too afraid to
take action. Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what
dies inside you while you’re still alive. Be bold. Be courageous. Be scared to
death, and then take the next step anyway.
2. You will only ever live the life you create for yourself.
Your life is yours alone. Others can try to persuade you, but they
can’t decide for you. They can walk with you, but not in your shoes. So make
sure the path you decide to walk aligns with your own intuition and desires,
and don’t be scared to switch paths or pave a new one when it makes sense.
Remember, it’s always better to be at the bottom of the ladder you
want to climb than the top of the one you don’t. Be productive and patient. And
realize that patience is not about waiting, but the ability to keep a good
attitude while working hard for what you believe in. This is your life, and it
is made up entirely of your choices. May your actions speak louder than your
words. May your life preach louder than your lips. May your success be your
noise in the end.
And if life only teaches you one thing, let it be that taking a
passionate leap is always worth it. Even if you have no idea where you’re going
to land, be brave enough to step up to the edge of the unknown, and listen to
your heart.
3. Being busy does NOT mean being productive.
Busyness isn’t a virtue, nor is it something to respect. Though we
all have seasons of crazy schedules, very few of us have a legitimate need to
be busy ALL the time. We simply don’t know how to live within our means,
prioritize properly, and say no when we should.
Being busy rarely equates to productivity these days. Just take a
quick look around. Busy people outnumber productive people by a wide margin. Busy
people are rushing all over the place, and running late half of the time. They’re
heading to work, conferences, meetings, social engagements, etc. They barely
have enough free time for family get-togethers and they rarely get enough
sleep. Yet, emails are shooting out of their smart phones like machine gun
bullets, and their day planners are jammed to the brim with obligations. Their
busy schedule gives them an elevated sense of importance. But it’s all an
illusion. They’re like hamsters running on a wheel.
Though being busy can make us feel more alive than anything else
for a moment, the sensation is not sustainable long term. We will inevitably,
whether tomorrow or on our deathbed, come to wish that we spent less time in
the buzz of busyness and more time actually living a purposeful life.
4. Some kind of failure always occurs before success.
Most mistakes are unavoidable. Learn to forgive yourself. It’s not
a problem to make them. It’s only a problem if you never learn from them.
If you’re too afraid of failure, you can’t possibly do what needs
to be done to be successful. The solution to this problem is making friends
with failure. You want to know the difference between a master and a beginner? The
master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried. Behind every
great piece of art is a thousand failed attempts to make it, but these attempts
are simply never shown to us.
Bottom line: Just because it’s not happening now, doesn’t mean it
never will. Sometimes things have to go very wrong before they can be right.
5. Thinking and doing are two very different things.
Success never comes to look for you while you wait around thinking
about it.
You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do. Knowledge is
basically useless without action. Good things don’t come to those who wait;
they come to those who work on meaningful goals. Ask yourself what’s really
important and then have the courage to build your life around your answer.
And remember, if you wait until you feel 100% ready to begin,
you’ll likely be waiting the rest of your life.
6. You don’t have to wait for an apology to forgive.
Life gets much easier when you learn to accept all the apologies
you never got. The key is to be thankful for every experience – positive or
negative. It’s taking a step back and saying, “Thank you for the lesson.” It’s
realizing that grudges from the past are a perfect waste of today’s happiness,
and that holding one is like letting unwanted company live rent free in your
head.
Forgiveness is a promise – one you want to keep. When you forgive
someone you are making a promise not to hold the unchangeable past against your
present self. It has nothing to do with freeing a criminal of his or her crime,
and everything to do with freeing yourself of the burden of being an eternal
victim.
7. Some people are simply the wrong match for you.
You will only ever be as great as the people you surround yourself
with, so be brave enough to let go of those who keep bringing you down. You
shouldn’t force connections with people who constantly make you feel less than
amazing.
If someone makes you feel uncomfortable and insecure every time
you’re with them, for whatever reason, they’re probably not close friend
material. If they make you feel like you can’t be yourself, or if they make you
“less than” in any way, don’t pursue a connection with them. If you feel
emotionally drained after hanging out with them or get a small hit of anxiety
when you are reminded of them, listen to your intuition. There are so many
“right people” for you, who energize you and inspire you to be your best self. It
makes no sense to force it with people who are the wrong match for you.
8. It’s not other people’s job to love you; it’s yours.
It’s important to be nice to others, but it’s even more important
to be nice to yourself. You really have to love yourself to get anything done
in this world. So make sure you don’t start seeing yourself through the eyes of
those who don’t value you. Know your worth, even if they don’t.
Today, let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as
you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as incomplete as you
think you are. Yes, let someone love you despite all of this, and let that
someone be YOU.
9. What you own is not who YOU are.
Stuff really is just stuff, and it has absolutely no bearing on
who you are as a person. Most of us can make do with much less than we think we
need. That’s a valuable reminder, especially in a hugely consumer-driven
culture that focuses more on material things than meaningful connections and
experiences.
You have to create your own culture. Don’t watch TV, don’t read
every fashion magazine, and don’t consume too much of the evening news. Find
the strength to fill your time with meaningful experiences. The space and time
you are occupying at this very moment is LIFE, and if you’re worrying about Kim
Kardashian or Lebron James or some other famous face, then you are
disempowered. You’re giving your life away to marketing and media trickery,
which is created by big companies to ultimately motivate you to want to dress a
certain way, look a certain way, and be a certain way. This is tragic, this
kind of thinking. It’s all just Hollywood brainwashing. What is real is YOU and
your friends and your family, your loves, your highs, your hopes, your plans,
your fears, etc.
Too often we’re told that we’re not important, we’re just
peripheral to what is. “Get a degree, get a job, get a car, get a house, and
keep on getting.” And it’s sad, because someday you’ll wake up and realize
you’ve been tricked. And all you’ll want then is to reclaim your mind by
getting it out of the hands of the brainwashers who want to turn you into a
drone that buys everything that isn’t needed to impress everyone that isn’t
important.
10. Everything changes, every second.
Embrace change and realize it happens for a reason. It won’t
always be obvious at first, but in the end it will be worth it.
What you have today may become what you had by tomorrow. You never
know. Things change, often spontaneously. People and circumstances come and go.
Life doesn’t stop for anybody. It moves rapidly and rushes from calm to chaos
in a matter of seconds, and happens like this to people every day. It’s likely
happening to someone nearby right now.
Sometimes the shortest split second in time changes the direction
of our lives. A seemingly innocuous decision rattles our whole world like a
meteorite striking Earth. Entire lives have been swiveled and flipped upside
down, for better or worse, on the strength of an unpredictable event. And these
events are always happening.
However good or bad a situation is now, it will change. That’s the
one thing you can count on. So when life is good, enjoy it. Don’t go looking
for something better every second. Happiness never comes to those who don’t
appreciate what they have while they have it.
Your turn…
What else would you add to this list? What important life lessons do you
often forget? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
About Author
This article was written by Written by MARC CHERNOFF. He’s a Passionate writers, admirers of the human spirit and full time students of life.
About Author
This article was written by Written by MARC CHERNOFF. He’s a Passionate writers, admirers of the human spirit and full time students of life.
Credits : marcandangel
