Life Lessons – Things I’ve Learned Along my Path

Ali from Soulful Body & Mind passed along an interesting series he thought I might like.  It’s a series that Abubakar Jamil is putting together.  He has invited a number of personal development bloggers to participate in a series on Life Lessons.  I love reading about life lessons, so I’m eager to participate.

Skimming through the list in the Life Lesson series, I found a number of posts titled “Things I wish I had known earlier in life.”  I sat down to consider all the lessons I’ve learned and to think about which lessons I wish I had been told of much earlier in life.  I drew a blank.  Nothing.  Nada.  I could think of major lessons I had learned, but not that I wished I had learned sooner.  The truth is, I think all the lessons I’ve learned have come at the exact time they were meant to.  Even if I had known the lessons, I don’t think it would have done much good, since experiencing the lessons is the only sure-fire way to learn them.

Here are my favorite lessons that I’ve learned.

Keep an Open Mind.  In the Second grade I was asked to draw a picture of Jesus.   Only one open minded child in the class drew him beardless.  That was my first brush with open mindedness.  Later in life I had a couple more reminders.  One was with a philosophy teacher, who, at Christmas time, proposed that if we loved one person more than everyone else, that we should by one great gift for that person to the exclusion of everyone else.  That immediately struck me as ludicrous until I opened my mind and gave it some thought.  I find life much more rewarding when I am open to new possibilities.

No Worries – Hakuna Matata.  In the ninth grade I volunteered to lead a class project.  It was stress city.  I had no plan, no help, and no hope.  I worried for days, not sure how to proceed.  Then one day it all came together.  The teacher helped, other people volunteered, and a plan took shape.  Days of worry had been for naught.  Everything worked out.

Falling Asleep is a learned process.  In the night grade, shortly after I learned to not worry, I learned to fall asleep.  Until that point I would lay in bed for hours waiting for sleep to arrive.  I began practicing some meditation techniques at bed time and eventually taught myself to fall asleep.

Everything Works Out.  This lesson was an ongoing one.  With my worry free philosophy, I gradually noticed that everything always works out.  Knowing this allowed me to have the time of my life after I was laid off from my “stable” job, forgoing our only source of income.  Knowing that everything would work out, I was able to thoroughly enjoy my time home with my family.

Reading is fun.  This one took me a while to learn.  I had some bad reading experiences in high school being forced to read and dissect books from the high school reading list.  A few years after high school I thought I’d give reading another shot.  I picked up some novels of classic literature, and gradually developed a love for reading.

Those are my biggest lessons.  I’ve learned a others along my path, and I continue to learn new lessons every day.  Be sure to head over to abubakarjamil.com to see the lessons learned by other great personal development bloggers.

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Tagged as: Bloggers are people too, Life Path, Open Mind, Sleep, Worry