Life lessons learned early allow you to make the most of your life by not repeating the big mistakes people repeatedly make throughout their life. Of course, learning life lessons the hard way helps us not forget. Yet, it also causes too much stress. We’ve decided to share some of the most powerful life lessons you should learn today so that you can enjoy the best life.
What are life lessons?
Life lessons are the things we learn through experience throughout our lives. Unfortunately, life lessons are those events that typically we learn too late in life, making us unable to go back and fix the situation.
15 Heart-warming Life Lessons You Should Learn Today
1. Life is a marathon, not a sprint
One of the life lessons to learn is that you don’t have to set out to do everything today. It’s okay if you find your passion late in life or if achieving a goal takes a couple of years longer than expected. While it’s true that life is short, the little moments that make life worth living are in those daily interactions. It’s usually not those larger than life goals that make life worthwhile. Take things one day at a time. You will accomplish everything you set out to. But success and happiness can be found throughout the entirety of our lively journeys. You don’t need to complete everything on your bucket list before you hit 30.
2. Be kind to people
The best life lesson to learn early in life is to be kind. If you’re ever going through a challenging time, challenge yourself to do an act of kindness every day until you start feeling better. It’ll be so effective that you’ll never stop doing it. Often, we say, “I’m a nice person; why does this keep happening to me?” Only to realize that we haven’t been that nice after all until we start making a conscious effort of it.
Aim to surprise people with compliments or gifts. Check in with your friends regularly. Host get-togethers with loved ones on days other than your birthday. Write kind messages to people going through a hard time. Mail people letters telling them all the things you appreciate about them. There are so many little things you can do that show people kindness and love. The more you do these things, the less drama you end up having in life.
3. Money doesn’t bring happiness unless it’s spent on others
While more money doesn’t always bring about more problems, it doesn’t bring much happiness either. A transformative life lesson is that when you’re generous with your money, you end up feeling better about yourself. Giving money to charities, helping someone in need, or doing an epic good deed are all things you’ll talk about. Spending money on others makes us feel good about ourselves.
4. The little things usually are the big things
For so much of our lives, we wait for big moments to happen. The moment we graduate, when we get engaged and then married, or when we finally become a parent. And while all those moments are worth a huge celebration, there are so many little moments in between that we can cherish. Waking up to the same person every day can bring us so much joy. Dressing up and going out for dinner with friends can get us roaring with laughter. Having a friend drop everything to be with you when you have a horrible day and feeling heard and supported by them is such an uplifting experience. Watching your toddler giggle with laughter when playing with them can warm your heart. Growing old with your family and friends and reflecting on how much you lived in life is what life is all about.
5. You can achieve anything
There’s no limit to what you can achieve. Anyone can become famous, successful, respected, or admired. There’s no such thing as impossible. In this life lesson, really take a look at the world around you. The secret to becoming successful is to put out content daily for years on end. You can create viral videos, grow a website, sell products, or share your thoughts. Posting on social media or online for years on end is a surefire way to get noticed by the people around you. So whether you strive to become a world-class singer or a successful entrepreneur, the fact that you too can achieve success is truer today than it was thirty to forty years ago.
6. It will eventually happen
It’s a weird conundrum. We can’t see the future, so all our unanswered questions make us panic. Will I ever find love? Or have children? Am I eventually going to succeed? We cut off the people we once loved when they break our hearts because the pain of the unknown makes us feel vulnerable. And then one day, you finally find your soulmate and get married. And the aha moment strikes. That’s why that previous relationship failed, and we accept the past. While I don’t have a magic ball to tell you your future, I assure you this; it’s highly likely that the things you worry about not having will eventually be things you have. So, take that breakup, setback, and fear with a grain of salt. If you want something bad enough, you just gotta keep taking the initiative.
7. Prioritize your health
This is probably one of the most powerful life lessons on this list– put your health first. Use your lunch breaks to eat a healthy meal, and then go for a quick walk. Invite friends over to exercise with you in your basement. When you want to spend time with people, suggest going for a walk around the neighborhood. Keep your stress levels low by following guided meditations, doing breathing exercises, and seeing a therapist. Take breaks to stand up and move around if you have a desk job. Taking less than 4,200 steps a day is considered sedentary; use a pedometer, fitness watch, or app to track the number of steps you take per day to ensure good activity.
8. Let the story unfold
Sometimes, horrible events have good outcomes, and occasionally positive events end disastrously. Life is an ebb and flow of good and bad cycling in and out of each other. Just want you to think the worst has happened; you have a happy ending. And sometimes your big moment arrives, and it feels like a letdown. Don’t react to each event so intensely. Watch the experience of life occur before your eyes. You can still play a leading role in trying to shape things that are within your control. Yet, don’t take things too personally. Sometimes the painful events that shaped us could’ve happened to anyone and weren’t really about us in the first place. Before making a judgment about a situation, wait and see this life lesson play out.
9. Focus on compounding
You’ve likely heard that millionaires and billionaires make money off compound interest. However, compounding isn’t just a concept for money, but for everything. If you treat people with kindness in every interaction, the good that comes from that will compound. If you’re a social media influencer who posts amazing viral content multiple times a day, the results will compound, and you’ll grow a massive audience. Eating junk food without exercising compounds to create weight gain. The sooner you realize this life lesson of compounding, the sooner you’ll make changes in your life to ensure the actions you take compound to the results you want.
10. You didn’t know better
This life lesson is for all the people who keep replaying a past mistake in their minds. You’re looking at your past actions and behaviors from today’s lens. Today, you know better. However, back then, you didn’t. If you had known how much chaos a past mistake would bring, I assure you, you wouldn’t have done it. While you can still own the mistake to learn from it, you shouldn’t continue beating yourself up for it. No one is perfect. Someone else has made the same mistake as you. Don’t allow it to turn into a habit, but don’t destroy your wellbeing from the pain it caused you either.
11. Prioritize respect in relationships
A psychotherapist who regularly meets with sexual assault survivors once told me, “respect should be the number one item on your list of values in a partner.” If someone disrespects you once, it’s a red flag to cut ties with that person, regardless of whether it’s an old friend or a current partner. When going on first dates, be clear that respect is at the top of the list. Be honest and direct about it. You can say something such as, “I value respect in relationships. If you disrespect me once, I’m turning around, walking away, and never looking back. As I value respect, not only will you have to be respectful of me, however, I will also be respectful towards you. For however long we end up dating, I would appreciate a calm, loving, and respectful relationship. If that’s something you’re interested in, let’s continue getting to know each other.”
12. Call loved ones daily
You never know when your last conversation with someone will be. Life passes quickly, and sometimes we lose loved ones suddenly. However, it’s hard to regret a relationship with a parent, friend, or loved one if you constantly make time for them. Calling your friends and family to do quick check-ins and tell them you love them is always worthwhile. It’s one of those little moments that really add up. One day when your loved ones die, you’ll know that you made an effort to strengthen those relationships. And you’ll have so many wonderful memories that you can reflect on.
13. Beat to your own drum
Life would be so much easier if we could just fit in. However, some of us eccentric types will never be able to do that. Phew! Life would be so dull if we all operated the exact same way, thought the same way, and had the same hobbies and interests. Your uniqueness might make you different from everyone else, but remember this life lesson: beat to your own drum. You’ll enjoy life more with a sense of authenticity. You’ll also create a lasting and memorable impact. Walking straight lines in formation to blend in with society is just not what life is about. So, break the mold with your wild personality and be the person you are every day with a sense of honesty.
14. Meditation brings inner peace
With so many woo-woo meditators out there, some people are put off by meditation altogether. However, the goal of guided meditation is to walk you through your mind to bring you inner peace. The mind can be filled with negative thoughts, which overwhelm us. While meditation doesn’t make the thoughts louder or quieter, it changes your relationship to those thoughts. You’ll notice how thoughts surface in and out of your mind beyond your control. Ultimately, you learn you are not your thoughts. And so it’s easier to detach from thoughts when you realize it’s not you who’s thinking them. They’re simply just popping up on their own. You can download the Declutter The Mind app or watch meditation videos on YouTube to help calm the mind.
15. Stop replaying someone’s words
The last life lesson to leave you with today is regarding some of the words and thoughts that replay in your mind. Those who find a therapist to help them with thought management might learn this life lesson a bit more quickly. Often, when we tell ourselves that we messed up, are bad, or are not qualified to do something, we aren’t the original thinkers of that thought. You could spend years of your life blaming yourself for something simply because someone else blamed you, even if it wasn’t your fault. Parents tell us we’re bad as children, and we think we’re bad as adults, even though we’ve changed so much over the years. It’s crucial to stop and ask where these thoughts and statements came from instead of repeating harmful and untrue statements about ourselves for years to come.
Conclusion
There are so many life lessons you can learn from beyond this list. Spend some time at a retirement home volunteering and asking people about their favorite moments and hardest moments in life. Simply spend more time chatting with others to learn new perspectives and ideas that you can use to help build up the lessons you learn along the way. You can use these life lessons as a starting point, and share your own with others to help prevent people from making the same mistakes.
