10 Painfully Clear Truths About Life We All Forget Too Often

The truth does not disappear when it is ignored or forgotten.

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 about life discussed here fall firmly into that category — timeless lessons most of us likely learned years ago, and have been reminded of since, but for whatever reason we haven’t fully grasped them yet.

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.

Let that reminder be your wake-up call to 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. And in life you can be comfortable or courageous, but not both at once. So be bold, be courageous… be scared to death, and then give yourself a chance to take the next step anyway.

2. To a great extent, you 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; it’s the ability to keep a good attitude while working hard for what you believe in.

Yes, at the end of the day this is your life, and to a great extent it’s made up of your little recurring habits and choices. May your daily actions speak louder than your words. May your life preach louder than your lips. May your success be your noise in the end. 

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 set boundaries, 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, looking at their phones, creating TikToks, etc. They barely have enough free time for exercise and they rarely get enough sleep. Yet, text messages, emails, and social media updates are blasting out of their smart phones like rockets, 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 there are dozens of 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. Learning the way on the way is key. 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 will 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 and determination to build your daily life around your answer.

And remember, if you wait until you feel 100% ready to begin, you will 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 the apologies you never received. The key is find some level of peace with every experience — positive or negative. In a way, it’s like taking a step back, letting go a little, and navigating each life experience with a open mind. It’s realizing that grudges from the past are a perfect waste of today’s growth and potential, and that holding one is like letting unwanted company live rent-free in your head.

Ultimately, forgiveness is a promise — one you want to keep. When you forgive you are making a promise not to hold the unchangeable past against your present self. It has nothing to do with freeing a past 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 worthy.

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 daily 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. You don’t have to exile them from your life, but you can give yourself space.

Set boundaries. Make yourself a priority. There are so many “right people” for you — those who energize you and inspire you to be your best self. It makes no sense to constantly force it with people who are the wrong match for you. (Note: Marc and I discuss this in more detail in the Relationships chapter of “1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently”.)

8. It’s not other people’s job to love and respect 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 and respect yourself to get anything done in the long run. 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.

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 a great life 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.

To paraphrase Terence McKenna, you have to create your own culture. Don’t watch too much TV or YouTube, don’t read every fashion tip online, 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 day.

Embrace change, and realize it happens and it can be managed. It won’t always be easy at first, but in the end it will be worth it. Acceptance is the first step forward.

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 relatively 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.

Now, it’s your turn…

Yes, it’s your turn to forgive yourself if you’ve recently mishandled or forgotten one or more of the points above. Forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made, for the times you lacked clarity, for the missteps that created needless stress. Forgive yourself now, for being human! These are all vital lessons. And what matters most right now is your willingness to start growing from them.

But before you go, please leave Marc and me a comment below and let us know what you think of this essay. Your feedback is important to us. 🙂

Which one of the points above resonated the most today?

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