In our previous Wisdom Note, we explored the 4 Truths on the Trail of Hardship. These bits of wisdom help us to live a rich and satisfying life while creating a living legacy. If you miss any of our Wisdom Notes please go to the blog to read previous installments.
There are certain principles in life that will bring success. This week we will explore the:
The 10 Truths for a Successful Life
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 that fall firmly into that category. These are life lessons that many of us likely learned years ago and have been reminded of ever since, but for whatever reason, haven’t fully grasped. 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.
LIVE your legacy 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. Be bold. Be courageous. Be scared to death, and then take the next step anyway. James 4:14 tells us, “How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone.”
2. You live the life that 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 life purpose, intuition, and desires. Don’t be scared to switch trails or create 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, but the ability to keep a good attitude while working hard for what you believe in. This is your life, and it is made up entirely of your choices. May your actions speak louder than your words. May your life preach louder than your lips. May your success be your noise in the end.
If life only teaches you one thing, let it be that taking a passionate leap is always worth it. Even if you have no idea where you’re going to land, be brave enough to step up to the edge of the unknown and listen to your heart.
3. Being busy is not the same as 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 live within our means, prioritize properly, and say no when we should.
Being busy rarely equates to productivity these days. Just take a quick look at our schedules. Our busyness overshadows our productivity by a wide margin. We are rushing all over the place and running late much of the time. We’re heading to work, conferences, meetings, social engagements, and sports events. We barely have enough free time for family get-togethers, and we rarely get enough sleep. Yet, emails are shooting out of our smartphones like machine-gun bullets, and our day planners are jammed to the brim with obligations. Our busy schedule gives us an elevated sense of importance. But it’s all an illusion. We are like hamsters running on a wheel, getting nowhere fast.
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.
Many 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 an apprentice? The master has failed more times than the apprentice has even tried. Behind every great piece of art is a thousand 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. Sometimes things have to go very wrong before they can be right.
5. Thinking and doing are two very different things.
You are what you do, not what you say you’ll 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 to build your life around your answer. And remember, if you wait until you feel 100% ready to begin, you’ll likely be waiting for 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 all the apologies you never received. The key is to be thankful for every experience – positive or negative. It’s taking a step back and saying, “Thank you for the lesson.” It’s realizing that grudges from the past are a perfect waste of today’s happiness, and that holding one is like letting unwanted company live rent-free in your head.
Forgiveness is a promise – one you want to keep. When you forgive someone, you are making a promise not to hold the unchangeable past against your present self. It has nothing to do with freeing a criminal of his or her crime and everything to do with freeing yourself from 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 amazing.
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 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. There are so many “right people” for you, who energize you and inspire you to be your best self. It makes no sense to force it with people who are the wrong match for you.
8. It’s not other peoples’ job to love 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 yourself to get anything done in this world. 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 do 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.
You have to create your own culture. Don’t watch too much TV, don’t read every fashion magazine, don’t read too many newspapers, and certainly don’t listen to the nightly diatribe of talking heads that spew propaganda on both the left and the right. 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 some celebrity, politician, or world leader, 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 think a certain way, to want to dress a certain way, look a certain way, and be a certain way. This kind of thinking is tragic. What is real is YOU and your friends and your family, your loves, your highs, your hopes, your plans, your fears…Live YOUR legacy each day. Don’t become someone else’s lemming.
Too often we’re told that we’re not important or that 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 manipulative media that wants to turn you into the perfect consumer that buys everything that isn’t needed to impress everyone that isn’t important. It’s a hamster wheel, think about it.
10. Everything changes every second.
Embrace change and realize it happens for a reason. It won’t always be obvious at first, but in the end, it will be worth it. What you have today may become what you had by tomorrow. You never know. Things change and often change 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 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 to someone else right this second.
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. As Ecclesiastes 5:19-20 says, “And it is a good thing to receive wealth from God and the good health to enjoy it. To enjoy your work and accept your lot in life—this is indeed a gift from God. God keeps such people so busy enjoying life that they take no time to brood over the past.”…and I might add let’s not worry about tomorrow either, no one knows what it will hold.
Along our trek for this week, we discovered the 10 truths that will make for a successful life. Through these truths commit to the following, “Seize the day, make the most of every opportunity, and create your living legacy each day because when tomorrow arrives, it will already be today.” In addition to our weekly Wisdom Notes, encourage your friends and family to also join us on our daily podcast – Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.