13 Lessons That Changed the Way I Looked at Things

🗒️ Lessons I learned over the summer

After taking a seat and jotting a few notes on what I’d learned during the past few months, I found that there was value in these short but practical lessons.

So, I thought I’d share. Free of fluff and unnecessary explanation (however, feel free to leave a comment if you’d like any clarification on the points), here are the big 13:

1. Being honest with yourself can be the difference between stagnancy and admitting your mistakes, enabling growth.
2. When facing a problem, sitting in it doesn’t help. Get outside, shift mindsets and then return. You’ll almost definitely progress better with a different perspective.
3. Take a cold hard look at why you’re doing things the way you are and why you’re doing them at all — you may often find that the reason isn’t one that is sensible. Releasing yourself from the notion that you must live up to others’ expectations and look good, and instead doing things that you value, can have a greatly positive effect on self-fulfillment.
4. It’s okay to grow out of a friendship, relationship, or activity that you once enjoyed. Though it may hurt to move on, you’ll soon realize it’s liberating. Things happen and everything is constantly changing. As soon as you realize that, you’ll also see that you can’t prevent that. You might as well change with it.
5. Reading is more than just a pass time, given you pick up the right book. They’re gateways to insight and perspective and although it may not seem like much, it can be a driver of systemic change.
6. The ability to put your feelings aside and gain the courage and humility to ask for help can be infinitely useful.
7. Far too often, we spend an excessive amount of time/energy on preparing and planning for an action while fearing failure, eventually leading to a. A massive delay in a goal’s achievement or b. Complete abandonment of the goal as a whole (and a waste of time)
8. Exercising, eating well, and resting enough can do a lot for both health and productivity.
9. Challenges and suffering more often than not breed our greatest successes. Keeping this in mind, we must remind ourselves that living a life free of challenges is not only impossible, but likely undesirable as well.
10. As long as you know what you care about and value beforehand and it aligns, there’s no need to feel guilty for enjoying yourself.
11. Making exceptions for yourself is a dangerous game. You are the only person to be held accountable to and unless you internalize the magnitude and importance of this responsibility, you won’t satisfy your own goals.
12. “Change the system to change the outcome that the action reaps” is as valuable as they say it is. Though it can go easily unnoticed, our mistakes repeatedly manifest themselves unless we change the underlying habits, principles, and frameworks that decide how something is done.
13. It takes more strength to lose with decency than to win with grace, but it’s easier said than done.

And there you have it, 13 lessons that changed the way I think, act, and perceive things, which may just do the same for you.

I hope at least one of them proves helpful to you, and if it does, remember to do more than just read it and nod. Take some time to see how the lesson may apply to you specifically and based on that, develop action items and really put it to use.

Thanks for reading!