| June 13, 2014
Photo Source: LiveLearnEvolve By: Marc and Angel
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.
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