There are so many lessons I wish I had realized while I was young enough to understand and apply them. The thing with knowledge, and often with life lessons in common, is that they've learned in retrospect, long after we desired them. The good news is that other people can prosper from our experiences and the lessons we’ve understood.
Here are some important life lessons you should discover early on:
1. Money Will Never Solve Your Real Problems
Money is a tool; a thing that buys you needs and some nice “wants,” but it is not the panacea to your difficulties.
There are a great different people who are living on very small, yet have wonderfully full and comfortable lives… and there are sadly a great many people are existing on quite a lot, yet have unhappy lives.
Money can buy a nice home, a great car, fantastic shoes, even a bit of safety and some creature satisfaction, but it cannot fix a shattered relationship, or cure loneliness, and the “happiness” it carries is only fleeting and not the kind that certainly and truly matters. Happiness is not for sale. If you’re wanting the “stuff” you can buy to “make it generously,” you will never be satisfied.
2. Pace Yourself
Often when we’re minor, just beginning our adult adventure we feel as though we have to do everything at one time. We need to agree on everything, plan out our lives, background everything, get to the top, find true love, figure out our life's objective, and do it all at the exact time.
Slow down—don’t rush into stuff. Allow your life to unfold. Wait a bit to see where it brings you, and take time to evaluate your options. Enjoy every bite of food, take moment to look around you, let the other person finish their side of the discussion. Allow yourself time to understand, to ponder a bit.
Taking action is crucial. Working towards your purposes and making plans for the future is admirable and often very helpful, but rushing full-speed ahead towards anything is a one-way tab to burnout and a good way to lose your life as it passes you by.
3. You Can’t Please Everyone
You don’t require everyone to approve of you or even like you. It’s human nature to prefer to refer, to be liked, appreciated, and valued, but not at the cost of your honesty and happiness. Other people cannot give you the assurance you seek. That has to arrive from inside.
Speak up, stab to your guns, affirm yourself when you need to, demand respect, stay real to your values.
4. Your Health Is Your Most Valuable Asset
Health is a precious treasure—always appreciate, nurture, and protect it. Good health is often ruined on the young before they have an opportunity to enjoy it for what it’s worth.
We incline to take our good health for granted because it’s exactly there. We don’t have to bother about it, so we don’t pay awareness to it… until we have to.
Heart disease, bone consistency, stroke, several cancers—the list of many largely preventable disorders is long, so take care of your health now, or you’ll admit guilt it later on.
5. You Don’t Always Get What You Want
No matter how carefully you intend and how hard you work, sometimes things just don’t figure out the way you expect them to… and that’s okay.
We have all of these possibilities; predetermined conceptions of what our “ideal” life will look like, but all too frequently, that’s not the fact of the life we end up with. Sometimes our dreams fall and sometimes we just alter our minds mid-course. Sometimes we have to drop to find the right lesson and sometimes we just have to try unique things before we find the right path.
6. It’s Not All About You
You are not the center of the universe. It’s very hard to view the world from a perspective outside of your own since we are always so attentive to what’s happening in our own lives. What do I possess to do today? What will this mean for me, for my job, for my life? What do I wish for?
It’s normal to be intensely aware of everything that’s going on in your own life, but you need to pay as much attention to what’s happening around you, and how things affect other people in the world as you do to your own life. It helps to keep things in perspective.
