I have many goals in my life, and one of them is to learn as much as possible. I try not to let a single day go by, without learning at least something. Some days I learn a lot, while following a web training, or reading a few Blinkist books, or by simply talking to someone who knows things that I don’t. Some days I learn only small things, or I simply think about the day, and try to learn from what happened that day.
In this post, I want to share already a few of the lessons I’ve learned in life. Some the hard way, some in compassion and love. But of all of them I hope they will help you too! And more will follow, no doubt.
Being brave is being scared of something and doing it anyway.
If you’re not scared of doing something, and you do it, it’s not brave, it’s just doing something. Maybe even doing something stupid. The real brave people are the ones who conquer their fears every day.
Pro Tip: make conquering your fear a daily thing: do one thing every day that scares you, that pulls you out of your comfort zone.
You are only being stopped from living the life you want by yourself, not by whatever else you think it is.
You are your biggest anchor, you are the one preventing yourself from doing what you want. The life you want is only one decision away. It will not be easy, it will take more than just that one first step and that one decision, but it all starts with that first step. And the only one who can take it for you, is you!
People aren’t wired to be fulfilled and happy, but to be miserable and safe
When you’re in a state of happiness, you let all defenses down, you’re not looking out for danger or worrying about food. And for most of the time, that should be the situation you are in right now. Humans exist for much longer than only the last 50-100 years, and a few thousand years ago, humans were constantly surrounded by danger, and constantly needed to be on the lookout for wild animals and what else.
Luckily, these days, in large parts of the world, we are reasonably safe, and we have no need to constantly be on the lookout. But our brains haven’t evolved that fast yet, and it keeps telling us to worry. Meditating and breathing can help you to get your brain back to the now (being mindful), and stop the worrying, and allowing the happiness to flow back in.
Without failures, there can be no consistent success.
Nobody likes to fail, everybody likes successes, yet, you need these failures to be successful. Each time you fail, you have the chance to learn something new. You can fail on different levels, you can fail, and be able to learn and readjust and not crash due to the failure, or you it’s possible that you didn’t see the results of the failure before you crashed, and you hit the wall, hard. In any case, a failure is a possibility to learn, to grow, to get better, and to reach higher levels of success.
You teach people how to treat you
Remember that when you think about how you step from one toxic relationship into the next. And make sure that you consider a relationship in the broad sense, not just between lovers, but between friends, family and co-workers too. You set the bar on how people are allowed to treat you. You can teach people to treat you with love and respect. I must admit that this is something I had a hard time doing, mainly because that was how I was taught I could be treated, by my parents. These days, I’m working hard on reprogramming myself, teaching myself that I too have the right to be treated with respect and love. And from there on, i can teach other people how they can treat me. And so can you!
You have to love yourself first, before you can be loved by someone else.
If you don’t love yourself, you will never open up for others to love you, or even believe that someone can love you. Loving yourself is the basis of many good things. Included teaching others to treat you well. Of course, why would you care how they treat you, if you don’t even love yourself. If you feel like you can use a bit more of self-love, check out these 21 things to do to love yourself more.
The more you seek approval from others, the less you will get it
Seeking approval from others makes you needy, it makes you dependent on other people. It means you do not approve of yourself, which means you are trying to get this approval from outside yourself. If you approve of you, you don’t need anybody else’s approval. Approving of yourself makes you strong and independent.
Reaching your goals will not make you happy
Nothing can make you happy consistently, unless you yourself. Happiness comes from within, if happiness is coming from outside stimuli (such as reaching this or that goal), it will only be temporary. Reaching a goal will bring you joy, not happiness.
Wisdom starts by realizing that there’s a lot of things you do not know
You know a lot, I’m sure, and you may even know a lot more than a lot of people you know. And still, for me, I realize that there is still a lot that I don’t know. Even many times more the number of things that I do know. And that’s ok. Even better, that’s great! I wouldn’t want to know everything, as that would mean there’s nothing left to learn, and I LOVE learning new things. And besides that, there are plenty of things that I don’t want to know. And that’s ok too.
Give what you want to receive
I haven’t tried it with everything yet, I knew that if you hit someone, you will most likely get hit back. But that’s not what you want of course. But what many people don’t realize is that it works even better with good things. Give a smile, and you will get a lot more smiles back. Give it a try, walk around in the city, and smile at people as much as you can. You will see, you will get a lot of smiles back. And that’s how simple it works, if you want someone to love you, love them. Simply love them, without conditions, you will get love back! Spread joy, you will get joy back! Give information, and you will get information back.
