One of the most powerful parts of growing up is the understanding, experience, and perspective you gain by simply experiencing and paying attention to life.
If you pay close enough attention, you will quickly notice patterns and realities that exist.
And while it is possible to resist these patterns (and many of us often do, myself included), I have come to learn I am far better off trying to get out of my own way and flow with the way life is, rather than demand life be another way.
Below are 8 of the harder truths I’ve had to come to learn and what we gain by embracing them.
Truth #1
Time doesn’t always heal everything.
Healing can be passive, but often it requires intentionality. It requires that we both explore what is broken and play a role in nurturing it back to wholeness.
Not everything inside of us knows how to heal on its own.
Truth #2
Nature optimizes for the whole.
Each of us is a small part of a much larger whole and nature is designed to optimize for the wellness of that whole, rather than the desires of any individual.
Understanding this allows us to let go of things being a certain way and frees us up to work with, rather than against, the flow of nature.
Truth #3
We are responsible for giving meaning to our lives.
We are well-served to take accountability for creating the meaning in our life that serves us.
From “rewriting” adverse events so they become catalysts for growth to embodying meaning that inspires us to build something bigger than ourselves.
Each of us is responsible for what our own lives mean to us and empowering ourselves to do so lets us write it as we see fit.
Truth #4
Most of life is a game against ourselves.
We are the authors of our own story and when we realize that, we can begin to accept that life is largely a game against our interpretation of our internal and external experiences.
Once we accept this, we can decide what we want to do, learn the rules of that game, and go about writing the story we want to experience.
Truth #5
Everything ends eventually.
This is a hard one to hear and an even harder one to embody, but doing so will help us let go of the suffering that comes from holding on to things that are no longer trying to exist.
Accepting the impermanence of everything helps us to become present with what exists right here, right now. It allows us to feel the full weight of gratitude and excitement – and empowers us to focus on what we feel really matters.
Truth #6
Your obsession with finding _____ is what Is preventing you from attaining it,
Often, we get too focused on the goal and not enough on the processes that will get us there.
Our obsession with the outcome (money, happiness, relationships) blinds us to the present moment we are in and not only robs us of enjoying the experience of building, but makes us miss out on the opportunities that are sitting right in front of us.
Truth #7
Talent and potential mean almost nothing without consistent effort and practice.
At the end of the day, talent and potential mean little if they are stuck inside of us and the only way to turn them into value is to bring them out in the world.
This almost exclusively happens through consistent effort and practice to hone and refine them but is one of the most rewarding parts of life.
Potential means little from the grave.
Truth #8
It's not what happens, it's how you react.
Life will deal you obstacles. Trying to avoid them altogether is futile.
What matters is not that bad things happen to us, but whether we let the things that happen to us write the rest of our story – or if we choose to learn, heal, and grow through them.
This is not always easy, but history has proven that expansion is often born out of less-than-ideal circumstances.
