I was playing with the question of what lessons would I really want to leave in this world if I died in the next six or twelve months. If I had a son or a daughter, what life lessons would I really want to share with them? Here are 13 life lessons I find the most important:
1. Find mentors, teachers, therapists, trainers and coaches for anything you would like to pursue. Choose them carefully and then trust them and learn from them. In this way, you ensure you will win in life and you will be enjoying yourself on the journey while growing and fulfilling your potential to the point where you want to. Don’t save money here. See a physical therapist even before you are in pain. See a therapist before you need him. Even if it’s just once a month. The same with questions or challenges with food or fitness or any other subject you find important. Without knowledgeable people around you, you are spinning around in your own story instead of having an objective view and fixing the parts of your life that are not working as well as you would like them to work.
2. When you have to make a decision, do your research by checking multiple sources if possible. For important decisions, for example around your health and well-being, seek the opposite views from your own and the arguments against your current conviction. Google the exact opposite of what you think and search for the opposing view. Stay objective and do it even when it’s hard and uncomfortable. Challenge your opinion until you have a really holistic view. Don’t succumb to confirmation bias – we people tend to search for information that confirms what we already believe. Know there is a whole world of information out there that you don’t know or that maybe doesn’t go together with your beliefs. Don’t disregard them. Try to expand your knowledge and understanding of the world. It will help you make better decisions as you have more information from different sides. After you do your research, follow your gut. What feels right, what would you like to do? In this way, you will make better decisions.
3. If you don’t want to do something, don’t. Stop doing it. There is nothing wrong if you don’t read a book from start to finish. You will maybe return to it someday. At this moment it’s not the right book for you but this could change. The same with any course, lecture, job, whatever. Do what you want to do.
4. School is not important. What is important is developing yourself, your personality, your passions, hobbies and the capacity to have fun and experience joy. See school as an opportunity to have fun, learn something new and meet new friends. School is far from being important for your happiness or the amount of knowledge you acquire. Finding passion and joy in what you are doing will lead you to become knowledgeable, nothing else. Follow your heart and curiosity regarding educational institutions.
5. It doesn’t matter if you get a bad grade. That just means you didn’t study for it. It doesn’t mean you are not good at the subject. You can become good at any subject If you so desire. If you fail at something you are not a failure. You just failed at that attempt. This is really important to understand. Read Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz as it is crucial for our lives with what kind of beliefs we operate every day. You don’t want to leave them to chance, to whatever you made up as a small child. Take responsibility for the right beliefs, for the truth. Search for it.
6. Whenever you need or want instructions or an instructor on any subject, find one. As I already mentioned, working with the right people opens new possibilities for you. A difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher for a subject can either ignite a passion in a student or complete resistance.
7. Follow your passion even if you will “maybe” never make a living with it. Just keep faith that what you are doing is the best thing for you and that you want to do it. Even if it is painful to not succeed, as long as it would be even worse to not even try. Read and listen to Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Big Magic and her masterminds on the Calm app and Youtube. She talks about a person who asked the writing instructor what to do after years and years of rejections from publishers. How can he continue? The instructor said that if he needs to continue writing and that if it would hurt even more for him not to write, he should continue and endure. Not sure about the exact wording but hopefully you get the message. If you need to do it, do it! I really recommend you the Big Magic and lectures from Elizabeth Gilbert, they are well worth your time. Only happiness and satisfaction matter. Nothing else.
8. You don’t have to save the world. Contribute as much as you want. As much as it feels ok to you. Whatever brings you fulfilment. By becoming yourself you are contributing the most possible to the healing of the world. Because in this universe with billions and billions of galaxies and planets and billions of years of evolution every one of us is so tiny that even the greatest world achievements of our time don’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. Don’t try to “save the world”. Just do what is calling you. This is your greatest possible contribution to the well-being of the world. Don’t feel like you have to sacrifice yourself for the greater good and then be resentful to people that don’t appreciate your efforts. Do what’s best for you, become you. That’s the most you can do. Your small share in the healing of the world.
9. Read and study good books and the wisdom that these books contain. A book or a good lecture is not something you read once because only with a second or third read and then by implementing the lessons, you really take the whole benefit available to you into your life and your heart.
10. Do fun stuff you enjoy. Take having fun and joy “seriously”. They are the most important thing, the essence of life. Everything that you have from life is the feeling you get when you are doing something. If you are experiencing joy and happiness today, this is a part of you. If you are experiencing anger and frustration, this is your life. Everything we are trying to do in the physical world is because we want to feel something. You buy a new car because of the feelings of winning and being alive when you do. You buy a house for the feeling of safety, stability and ownership. We are always just going after feelings. When you want something, always go directly to the feeling you want. Never take detours like this one: “I will have fun when I buy this house and grow this business to more than one million of revenue in one year”. No, just have fun if you want to have fun. Detours don’t work. They take us way off the path and leave us stuck nowhere. Go directly to the source. Don’t let the thoughts that your mind makes up change what you want to go after. You don’t have to be rich to experience freedom. Just act on the freedom right now. Don’t let excuses stemming from our false beliefs interfere with your goals. But do get to know your thoughts and feelings so you know what you are experiencing and then you will be able to deal with it much better when challenges in your life appear.
11. There is a saying “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. This is not true. The dog just has to want to learn. It is written in Tao te ching by Lao Tzu: “Men are born soft and supple; dead they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.” Always be open to changing your mind. Be flexible and open to anything. Especially to learn something new. You can always learn something new and change your mind if you are open. You become old when you stop doing that and not the other way around: you first become old and then you lose the ability to change your mind. If you are always flexible, you never get old. Appreciate and value other believable people and opinions. Read the book “Principles” by Ray Dalio and let it help you with producing a radically open-minded view of the world
12. You have the whole world in your hand. Anything is possible. You can have and become anything you want. You can go anywhere at any time. Maybe you have a job and you have thoughts like “You can go anywhere, you have to work today!”. Not true, you are choosing to go to work. You are choosing everything every day. And you have the option to choose differently every second of your life, at every single moment you can walk out from what is your current reality into a new reality.
13. You can’t have everything you want but you can have anything you want. So chose what to focus on with care and give it your full energy. Your biggest desire can be yours
