The truth does not
cease to exist when it is ignored.
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. (Angel and I discuss this in
more detail in the “Passion and Growth” chapter of 1,000 Little Things Happy,
Successful People Do Differently.)
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. (Read The Success
Principles.)
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. (Read Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On
It.)
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.
Credit:
Marcandangel.com
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