Sometimes thinking about your life and sorting out what you have learned is just as important as tackling a new venture. That’s what our new sister site, Everyday Life Lessons, is all about. It’s an online community where people share, rank and discuss life’s greatest lessons.
The site challenges you to reflect on your past, dig deep within yourself and answer one simple question:
What has life taught you?
Think about all the things you would love to tell yourself if you could travel back in time to give your younger self some advice about life.
Here’s a sample of 111 life lessons that were recently submitted to the site:
- Spend more time with those who make you smile and less time with those who you feel pressured to impress.
- Never tell someone their dreams are impossible. You’ll feel like a fool when they prove you wrong.
- No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you are still way ahead of everyone who isn’t trying.
- Pursuing happiness by acquiring material things (fancy cars, expensive jewelry, designer clothing) is like jogging to the grocery store on your treadmill: it won’t get you anywhere.
- Laugh at stupid jokes. Apologize. Tell someone how much they mean to you. It’s the small moments that make life grand.
- At 79, I regret the things I didn’t do far more than the things I did.
- Life is way more enjoyable when you stop trying to be cool and simply focus on being yourself.
- Start by asking yourself whether each of your relationships drags you down or lifts you up. Surrounding yourself with positive, loving people is half the battle of living a happy, successful life.
- When the ‘want’ gets stronger, the ‘how’ gets easier.
- Too often we judge people on too little information. Instead of judging someone for what they do or where they are in their life, figure out why they do what they do and how they got to where they are.
- If you want to feel rich, just count all the great things you have that money can’t buy.
- I have taken noticed that the deeper I know about myself, the clearer I understand others.
- You can’t change who you are. You can only change what you know and how you apply this knowledge.
- I don’t need a certain number of friends, just a number of friends I can be certain of.
- People who are meant to be together will find their way back to each other. They may take detours, but they’re never lost.
- The older I get, and the more I learn, the more I realize I know so little. At 72, life still teaches me new lessons every day.
- You can press forward long after you can’t. It’s just a matter of wanting it bad enough.
- Complaining is like slapping yourself for slapping yourself. It doesn’t solve the problem, it just hurts you more.
- Embrace change. As uncomfortable as it is sometimes, change allows us to stretch and grow. New things feel awkward and scary at first, but those feelings go away, and you are left with something bigger and bolder in your life.
- Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises. Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow emotionally and intellectually. They force us to stretch ourselves and our comfort zones, which means we won’t feel totally comfortable at first. And when we don’t feel comfortable, we don’t feel ready. (Read The Road Less Traveled.)
- No matter how bad your heart has been broken the world doesn’t stop for your grief. The sun comes right back up the next day.
- Supporting, guiding, and making contributions to other people is one of life’s greatest rewards. In order to get, you have to give.
- Learn to adjust the sails of your life to unpredictable winds, while keeping your focus clear on your destination. And keep sailing until you get there.
- As you strive to achieve your goals and dreams you can count on there being some fairly substantial disappointments along the way. Don’t get discouraged, the road to your dreams may not be an easy one. Think of these disappointments as challenges – tests of persistence and courage – that life throws at you during your journey. They are necessary and are meant to help you grow as a person.
- Spend less than you earn, go without until you have the money in hand.
- Freedom is the greatest gift. Self-sufficiency is the greatest freedom.
- Even when you feel like you have nothing, someone else likely has far less. Find them and help them. You’ll see why.
- Marriages evolve and change. The feelings you had for the man or woman you married will mutate and evolve several times over the life of a marriage. Hopefully you will evolve in the same direction or at least embrace and accept the changes in the other person. It takes work, and sometimes it takes counseling. Don’t gloss over those changes or you may wake up next to a stranger one day.
- Negativity breeds more negativity. When you focus only on the negative, obviously that’s all you will see. You will not seek out positivity, and even when positivity comes into your life, you’ll look for the negative side of things.
- If you want something in your life you’ve never had, you’ll have to do something you’ve never done.
- As a child, I always thought the expression “it’s better to give than to receive” was trite and silly. As an adult, I recognize the expression’s value. Having the capacity to give means you possess a mindset of abundance. Having the will to give means you want to make a difference in the world. Having the desire to give means you care.
- It’s not so much what you say that counts, it’ how you make people feel.
- Figure out what you want. Set real goals and make a logical plan to achieve them. It’s like the old saying, “A goal that is never written down is nothing more than a New Year’s resolution.” And we all know what happens to New Year’s resolutions.
- Being open-minded is the key to more knowledge. If you want to know more about the world you have to keep an open mind. You have to give people and things a chance.
- If you want love, give love. If you want friends, be friendly. If you want money, provide value. It really is this simple.
- If something won’t be significant to you 3 days/3 months/3 years from now, don’t waste all your time worrying about it now.
- Manage aging, but why fight it? You can spend a fortune on face creams, plastic surgery, hair growth formulas, and Botox, but eventually you realize you are fighting an uphill battle. Groom yourself nicely. Stay fit. Have unsightly things removed. But accept the beauty of aging. A striking mature man or woman is much more attractive than someone who looks overly taunt, tanned or top-heavy.
- Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.
- Being busy and being productive are two different things.
- Life is unbelievably brief. When you’re young, you might feel like there’s a huge mass of time ahead of you. But trust me, it passes much faster than you think. You get gray hairs before you feel like a real adult. And then you have kids, and suddenly they’re leaving for college. Stop long enough to appreciate it all.
- Mistakes teach you important lessons. Every time you make one, you’re one step closer to your goal. The only mistake that can truly hurt you is choosing to do nothing simply because you’re too scared to make a mistake.
- Your health is your life, keep up with it. Get an annual physical check-up. [Read more…]