Five Life Lessons I’ve Learned (Sometimes the Hard Way)
Some days life is sweet, but some days life serves a kick in the teeth. In the end, we all hope the sweet outweighs the kicks. Trust me with this, it does. Sometimes the scales get tipped a bit either way, but eventually life balances itself out. Without the bad days, how would we even be able to tell what a good day is? Remember, as long as we live and breathe, we’re 100% in overcoming the bad days, and it’s a matter of time before the good days come rolling back in. I wouldn’t call myself a subject matter expert in life by any stretch, but I do have a few things I’ve learned about life (sometimes the hard way) which have helped me to better deal with things when the scales begin to tip and the path ahead is hazy.
Five Lessons Life Teaches Us
1. The process of finding yourself never ends. Self-discovery is a never-ending process. When I was a kid, I lived under the naïve notion that once you’re an “adult” you magically have everything all figured out. Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’m an ordinary girl, well into her 30’s, and while I have a much better notion of who I am than when I was that child, I know I still have so much to figure out. Nitin Namdeo once said, “The journey of life is not about the destination but about exploration.” Because it’s this thing about life – the moment we think we’ve finally figured it out, life throws us a body-check to remind us that we still have much to learn. But you know what? That’s part of the fun!
2. Life is fragile. At some point, we will fall. But we can always get back up. Remember that always and no matter what. I think at this point in time we all understand how in a moment, everything can change. I can’t count the times I’ve had to get back up, and I’m going to guess that situation sounds familiar to you too. The only guarantee in this life is that eventually we’re going to have to say goodbye to it. The past is the past, leave it there. What we do today until our final breath is within our control. That is something I periodically forget, so I try and remind myself of this daily. Live for today, because in this specific life, we are not promised anything more than the present moment.
3. Who someone is when no one else is looking will tell the truest story. It’s a fact of life, some people are fake. They act one way in public and one way in private. Sometimes that is meant with malicious intent, other times it’s in an effort to portray that impossible perfectionism standard so many feel pressured to live up to. I’ll tell you, it’s not pleasant and it causes damage and pain to those closest. And that pain is intense. When I was younger, I always tried to paint everything “pretty”, no matter how dark the picture might have been. Was it with good intensions? Sure. But even the best of intentions can lead us awry, at times. That is why at some point, I made the decision to be real – what you see if what you get. Can that get a little messy at times? Of course, it can. But overall, it is a much healthier and balanced lifestyle.
4. At times, we just need to take a chance. What some people call a leap of faith. Step out into the great unknown in that journey to become whoever and whatever we are destined to be. Lao Tzu once said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” While that first step may be small, it is often the most challenging one to take. It is the chances we take that will define the life that we make.
5. To be yourself is all that you can do. Yes, I took that lyric from an Audioslave song (thank you, Chris Cornell!) because it has resonated with me since I’ve heard it. This world is notorious for always trying to make people think they need to be (or should want to be) a certain way. But that always leads to failure. No matter how many times you shove the square peg into a round hole, it’s not going to work. Quit fighting who you are. Once we realize who each of us are, it makes everything else much easier and gives us a clear perspective. I can tell you this from experience. You can’t chase everyone else’s version of “happy”. Instead, it’s crucial we each figure out our unique version of happy, and never give up the chase.
Life is complicated, but I’m here for it
Oh yes, there are many more than five lessons that life will teach us. But for today, those are the ones I have chosen to highlight. Life is SO hard. It is exhausting and at moments it will break us. I’ve been there before and I’ll be there again. And likely, so have you. Luckily, we have other people traversing this crazy journey along with us and that makes it all worth it. Because it’s about those connections we forge with those we allow in our inner circles and the memories we make along the way that will help to shape the patterns of this life.
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Cheers until next time,
Crystal
“It is the chances we take that will define the life that we make.”
