Lessons. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind?
Life?
Explicitly, we learn a vast number of lessons in life. A huge number of lessons that sometimes we do not even comprehend, properly. We are all here for a certain period of time, which is temporary. Unfortunately, not all of us understand it. However, this temporary life is more like a turmoil of experiences. Each day we learn something. The depth of each lesson variates from a range of 1 to an uncountable range for each one of us. Thinking about the major lessons I have learned so far, I ponder why not brainstorm them and share, publicly.
Here we go.
- Make mistakes, but never repeat them.
Mistakes are part of the cycle of life. Mostly, unavoidable. On the bright side, it triggers our mind to ‘analyse’ the whys, whats, hows, and whens. Did I missed any other? Nevertheless, the problem is most of us avoid that. And that is the most dangerous avoidance. Even the great Albert Einstein has said, ‘A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.’
I too make mistakes. Knowingly not huge mistakes, but generally yes I accept that I make them. Because I ain’t no perfectionist.
However, one major lesson I’ve learned from mistakes is to NEVER repeat them. Yes, I make mistakes, I learn out of them, I try to apply the lessons I learn from them, and I DON’T repeat them.
2. Everything’s temporary, except the memories we leave behind.
Again, life is a temporary turmoil of both negative and positive experiences. Each experience is unique to each one of us. Because the way we experience the same experience differs from that of another. You have to be in one’s shoes to understand them. Right?
One of my major goals this year — while, one can call it almost impossible or unattainable… is to create a positive imprint in every heart I touch. Yes, the word ‘every’ has a higher scope of impossibility. Although, this is the aim we all should process in our mind. Our homes need it, our workplaces need it, our society needs it, our world needs it.
In fact, imagine how impactful it would be to leave positive memories to cherish, while we can. Now that would be a biggest achievement even once we are gone (one day).
3. Patience is a strategy.
Patience is a weapon. It’s a weapon that broadens paths. It emphasizes peace, clarity and wisdom. If we think of it as a strategy — knowing when to use and how to use. I think life would be much easier for all of us. All we need is a conscious mind to utilize patience, accurately.
4. Self-care or/and self-love is not just a practice, but a crucial ritual.
“Someday, I’ll be living in a big old city
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean”
Sounds familiar? Taylor Swift’s lyrics on her hit ‘Mean’ tells us a lot for me about self-love. Simply, no external influence can affect my love for myself. I won’t stop loving myself, caring for my self to be where I am supposed to. And I’d do all these by also loving the ones who are mean for me.
Well, that’s what self-love is. It’s not selfish. It is why we shall practice self-care as a ritual because that is when we learn to love our own self, love our God, and love others.
5. No matter how good you are, you will always be judged — so try to understand another non-judgmentally.
“Listen with no judgement and understand with compassion.”
Communication Skills for Modern Day Managers. Well, I caught that via a LinkedIn course. Being judgemental is a common habit of our human era. It’s typical.
Judgemental means judging someone unreasonably. We will always be judged, and we cannot stop that. BUT. We can try to be non-judgemental to one another. Ditto. Taking a sufficient amount of time to be in someone else’s shoes to understand their perspective prior jumping in to unreasonable conclusions sounds much reasonable — doesn’t it?
6. Calmness is a strength not a weakness
Calmness resonates well with patience as in lesson number three. It also resonates with all the other lessons stated here.
The Supreme Lord Buddha says,
“you will always be getting praise and blame, but do not let either affect the poise of the mind. Inward calm cannot be maintained unless physical strength is constantly and intelligently replenished.”
The more we learn how to be calmer, the more stronger we become.
7. Life itself is a turmoil of experiences. Don’t let just one experience define your threshold.
Again, manifesting in calmness, and patience supports this lesson. It’s about extracting the good out of every bad and manifesting it to face the next experience.
8. Don’t be a slave of burnout.
Never.
9. Some may not value you. But the right people will start valuing you, when you start valuing your own self.
It’s all in the process of self-discovery, and when you start loving yourself. You value yourself. And eventually those who truly value you will start showing up.
10. Letting go is the biggest challenge in life.
It truly is. It’s a one that I personally experienced last year. And ever since that, I’ve been in tears consecutively for these five months (whenever I picture those moments). Happy moments. I remember reading Jay Shetty’s ‘Think like a Monk’. It demonstrates about two kinds of fears. The attachment fear and the detachment fear. Losing my loved ones has always been my biggest fear. There’s a lot of scope in this lesson, which I’m still in the process of learning, and practicing. I mean I am no expert in all these lessons I have mentioned because I still encounter experiences, where I fail to handle, tactically. I forget to apply what I’ve learned. Perhaps, due to spontaneity. So, the next one is something like that.
An additional lesson that I’d like to pop-in is,
Never be impulsive with your perceptions on someone’s questions, or statements or requests. Specially over TEXTS!
Because your reaction costs an emotion. A valuable emotion. We live in a time where we mostly communicate over text, and social media. It’s like our go-to thing every single day. Hence, I believe it is really important to bring this out also, based on my personal experiences.
Sometimes our external and internal influences — for example, our health conditions, our state of mind, where we are, our perceptions are factors that affect our reactions. BUT our reactions are huge triggers that we must be aware of. We must control of. Not all understand us deep down, and not all take that extra mile to give a chance to understand our reactions. Some can be really sensitive to these, which is why we need to think before we become too expressive.
Hence, we must take time to analyze (if our mind is not in a good condition) to process the deeper meaning behind those words. Because it is when we further analyse we elaborate it, clearly, and we reciprocate better for that situation.
Hence, my recommendations are as follows:
-Don’t respond to crucial conversations if you are not in a clear state of mind. Let the other party know about it and talk things out when you are clearly in a positive mood.
-Don’t be impulsive with your decisions after these situations. Specially if there’s correspondence from the other. If they apologizes, acknowledges the issue and embraces re-correction. You don’t want to turn your back to such rare humble hearts do you?
Because as recalled, in general we don’t know what people go through behind our screens. We don’t see their behaviour, their gestures. Sometimes an actual gesture could answer better than 160 characters. And our spontaneity could ruin the beauty of lots of potential things that we could embrace if we were thoughtful enough to not be unthoughtful.
Stopping for now, bracing myself to learn more as I go against the flow.
Does any of the lessons mentioned here resonates with you?
