I
chanced upon this article written by Marc and Angel . This is logic but nowadays, logic seemed a rare find. Enjoy the read peeps.
Today
marks the five-year anniversary of a close friend’s unexpected passing. This
morning I caught myself reflecting on that dreary morning when I received the
news, and how several colleagues and acquaintances whom I barely knew came up
to me over the subsequent hours and gave me a pat on the back, a hug, or a
genuine “I’m sorry.”
In the midst of my sorrow I now realize this tragic loss
taught me three important things. First, the worst things can happen to the
best people for no obvious reason at all. Second, most people, even the ones
you don’t think care, are genuinely good people who do care. And finally, just
as it is difficult to see all the opportunities life gives you until you’re
looking back, it is virtually impossible to fully understand certain life
circumstances until they actually happen to you.
It’s a variation of this
final point that I want to explore further today – seven important life lessons
almost everyone learns the hard way, eventually.
1. The people you lose remain a part of
you.
Someday
you will be faced with the reality of loss. And as life goes on, days rolling
into nights, it will become clear that you never really stop missing someone
special who’s gone, you just learn to live around the gaping hole of their
absence.
When you lose someone you can’t imagine living without, your heart
breaks wide open, and the bad news is you never completely get over the loss.
You will never forget them. However, in a backwards way, this is also the good
news. They will live on in the warmth of your broken heart that doesn’t fully
heal back up, and you will continue to grow and experience life, even with your
wound. It’s like badly breaking an ankle that never heals perfectly, and that
still hurts when you dance, but you dance anyway with a slight limp, and this
limp just adds to the depth of your performance and the authenticity of your
character.
2. The pursuit of happiness is about
finding meaning.
Pursuing
happiness is not at all the same as being happy, which is a fleeting feeling
dependent on momentary circumstances. If the sun is shining, by all means bask
in it. Happy times are great and often fun-filled, but happy times pass,
because time passes. This is something we rarely grasp at first.
The lifelong
pursuit of happiness, on the other hand, is more elusive; it’s not based on a
particular outcome. What you are really pursuing is meaning – living a meaningful
life. It starts with your “why.” (Why are you doing what you’re doing with your
life?) When your “why” is meaningful, you are pursuing happiness. There will be
times when things go so wrong that you barely feel alive. And there will also
be times when you realize that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better
than living a lifeless existence for eighty years on someone else’s terms. The
pursuit isn’t all or nothing; it’s all AND nothing, with ups and downs and
worthwhile lessons along the way.
In other words, happiness comes most easily
when you know what you’re doing, believe in what you’re doing, and love what
you’re doing (and who you’re doing it with), regardless of how things turn
out.
3. Seeking validation from others
invalidates YOU.
Has
the fear of rejection held you back? Have you ever been so fearful of what
others might think or say about you that it kept you from taking positive
action? I bet you’re shaking your head, “yes.”
It’s time to change your
mindset. Today, the only person you should try to be better than is the person
you were yesterday. Prove yourself to yourself, not others. You are GOOD
enough, SMART enough, FINE enough, and STRONG enough. You don’t need other
people to validate you; you are already valuable.
If someone says “no” to you,
or if someone says something negative about you, that doesn’t change anything
about YOU. The words and opinions of others have no real bearing on your worth.
Certainly it can be helpful and desirable to make a good impression in certain
situations, yet it’s not the end of the world when you are faced with
rejection.
It’s great to receive positive feedback, but it simply doesn’t
always happen. That’s OK though, because you know where you’re headed and you
know your true worth does not depend on the judgment of others. When you set
out to make a true difference in life, there will be those who disagree with
you, those who ignore you, and those who flat out reject your ideas and
efforts. Look beyond them, step confidently forward, do what must be done, and
let them think what they will.
4. Regret hurts far worse than fear.
When
we give in to our fears, we have a harder time looking at ourselves in the
mirror. Sadly, very few of us escape learning this lesson firsthand. If you
have already experienced this a time or two, you know what you need to do.
It
is only when we risk losing that we truly open the possibility to win. Whether
it is quitting your job to build a business, running a marathon, or traveling
to unknown parts of the world, any worthy endeavor requires risk, struggle and
sacrifice. Some of these things may even terrify you, but ask yourself if these
fears are stronger than the most powerful of fears, the fear of a wasted
life?
If you’ve never lost your mind, you’ve never followed your heart. It’s
better to look back on life and say, “I can’t believe I did that,” than to look
back and say, “I wish I did that.” Don’t let time pass you by like a hand
waving from a train you desperately want to be on. Don’t spend the rest of your
life thinking about why you didn’t do what you can do right now. Live your
life. Take risks. Feel passion. Discover love. Run free.
5. Life is too unpredictable for rigid
expectations.
When
you stop predicting and expecting things to be a certain way, you can
appreciate them for what they are. Ultimately you will realize that life’s
greatest gifts are rarely wrapped the way you expected.
With a positive
attitude and an open mind, you will find that life isn’t necessarily any easier
or harder than you thought it was going to be; it’s just that “the easy” and
“the hard” aren’t exactly the way you had anticipated, and don’t always occur
when you expect them to. This isn’t a bad thing; it makes life
interesting.
Ninety-nine percent of the time life delivers the experiences
that are most helpful for your personal growth. How do you know it’s the
experience you need? Because it’s the experience you’re having. The only
question is: Will you embrace it and grow, or fight it and fade?
The key, of
course, is to accept that not everything is meant to be. When things don’t turn
out how you expected, you have to seriously sit down with yourself and come to
grips with the fact that you were wrong about it all along. It was just an
illusion that never really was what you thought it was. It’s one of the most
difficult realizations to accept, to realize that you feel a sense of loss,
even though you never really had what you thought you had in the first place.
6. When you try to run away, you end up
running in place.
“Don’t
think about eating that chocolate donut!” What are you thinking about now?
Eating that chocolate donut, right? When you focus on not thinking about
something, you end up thinking about it.
The same philosophy holds true when
it comes to freeing your mind from a negative past experience. By persistently
trying to move away from what you didn’t like and don’t want, you are forced to
think about it so much that you end up carrying it’s weight along with you. But
if you instead choose to focus your energy on moving toward something you do
like and do want, you naturally leave the negative weight behind as you
progress forward.
Bottom line: Running away from your problems is a race
you’ll never win. Move TOWARDS something instead of AWAY. Rather than trying to
eliminate the negative, focus on creating something positive that just happens
to replace the negative.
7. Unanticipated hardships are
inevitable and helpful.
Nobody in this
world is going to blindside you and hit you as hard as life will. Sometimes life
will beat you to the ground and try to keep you there if you let it. But it’s
not about how hard life can hit you, it’s about how hard you can be hit while
continuing to move forward. That’s what true strength is, and that’s what
winning the game of life is all about.
When you have a lot to cry and complain
about, but you prefer to smile and take a step forward instead, you are growing
stronger. Work through your struggles and hardships. Even when it feels like
things are falling apart, they’re not. Take control of your emotions before
they take control of you. Everything will fall into place eventually. Until
then, learn what you can, laugh often, live for the moments, and know that it’s
all worthwhile in the end.
Afterthoughts
Gandhi once said, “Live as if you
were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” I love this quote.
There’s no doubt that every day is a gift, and the gift is an opportunity to
live, to learn, and to grow.
Be a student of life. Indulge in it and absorb
all the knowledge you can, while you can. You may have to loose some things to
gain some things, and you may have to learn some things the hard way. That’s
OK. All experiences are necessary. The purpose of your life is to live it in
full, to partake in it to the utmost, to reach out with an open mind and an
honest heart for the newest and richest experience being offered
# Balqesh Abdullah
No comments:
Post a Comment