10 Painfully Obvious Truths About Life Everybody Forgets Too Soon
The truth does not vanish when it is forgotten or ignored.
You know how you can hear something a hundred times in 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 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. 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.
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.
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.Just because it’s not happening now, doesn’t mean it never will. Learning the way on the way is key.
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 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.
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 —
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.
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.
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. Know your worth, even if they don’t.
9. What you own is not who YOU are.
Most of us can make a great life with much less than we think we need. That’s a valuable reminder, especially in a culture that focuses more on material things than meaningful connections and experiences.
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.
