7 Life Lessons I Would Like to Tell My Younger Self

We all stumble through life trying to figure things out from the very beginning. One of the first things that we learn is that when we cry someone tends to our needs. Later we learned to put things in mouths, sit up, climb, stand up, walk, talk…

We all start at the same point and we all must learn about life through our experiences and through our interactions with others. These experiences can be positive or negative but either way it is up to us to decide what we will learn.

This is why I am excited to take part in Abubakar Jamil‘s Life Lessons Series!

I have learned a lot of lessons through my lifetime and many of them I wish that I would have known many years ago when I was much younger.

1. Don’t worry about what others think about you.

Everyone has an opinion and very few of them actually matter.

Especially the people who look down on you. They don’t care enough about you to find out what is fabulous about you. They are so stuck on their own insecurities that they need to look down on others in order to feel better about themselves.

It is not worth your energy, emotions or tears to give a second thought to the haters of this world.

Focus instead on the people who love you and want to build you up. These are the people to care about what they think of you – the people who are on your side cheering you on.

2. Your differences make you unique and amazing!

There is no reason at all to be a carbon copy of everyone else out there. If we were all meant to be exactly alike that’s how we would have been made.

Take a look around and you will see that is not the case! There are people of every color, shape, size, and talent imaginable! It keeps life fun and interesting! What a boring place it would be if we all looked like we stepped off the cover of Glamour magazine.

Love your differences, embrace them, be grateful for them! What a sad waste of time to feel sorry for yourself because you aren’t as tall as everyone else, have freckles, curly hair and make the Pilsbury Dough Boy look tan.

These differences are things that make you different and interesting – use them to your advantage! Find the advantages, they are there!

3. The ONLY person that you can change is yourself!

There are a lot of frustrating people in life! They are everywhere from your family to work to the store to out on the road.

But no matter how much they frustrate you, no matter how much they try to control you there is nothing that you can do to change them. Nothing. Not one little thing.

The only thing that you can do (and this is a BIG thing) is to control how you react to those people. Once you understand this concept and put it into practice you will be a lot happier and handle difficult situations with much more ease.

4. Most people aren’t out to get you – they are merely out for themselves.

A lot of times it can seem that people are out to get you but most of the time they are not. Most of the time other people are too focused on themselves to worry about you.

When they do things that make your life more difficult than it needs to be chances are really good that they are looking at their own interests and not even giving any consideration as to how their actions affect others.

What seems to be malice is just thoughtlessness.

5. Focusing on anger is a waste of your time and energy, plus it costs your physical health.

As Dad often said, “Life isn’t fair” and he was right. If you go through life expecting everything to be fair you will continue down a path of disappointments.

People and situations will always disappoint and also many things which feel unfair aren’t even a matter of fairness. Stop keeping score and you’ll be so much happier!

If you focus on being angry it will actually affect your physical health. Take it from me, I used to get sick from being so angry because it would literally eat away at my immune system. I have been so much healthier since I have chosen the path of gratitude rather than anger and resentment.

6. Stop trying to be perfect!

You will never be perfect, life is a process of learning and growing. You will do much better to focus on learning and growing rather than perfection. It’s a flawed goal because it can never be reached.

You can aim for doing your best, for learning what you can, for all kinds of things. But please don’t make perfection your goal or standard. You will only cause yourself a lot of frustration and pain. Not to mention the damage done to your self worth!

Also don’t pay attention to anyone who expects you to be perfect. I guarantee you that they don’t live up to their own expectations!

7. You can’t make everyone happy.

Everyone has their own ideas of how life should go, everyone has their own opinions and ideas, everyone has ideas about how they want others to be.

Many people have MUCH higher expectations of others than they do of themselves.

You will drive yourself insane trying to make everyone else happy – and you will never ever succeed, either. Ever. You can make some people happy some of the time. But you will never make everyone happy all of the time.

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