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.
Great article written by: Marc Chernoff
