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These are the complete set of only twelve primary life tips that work as a cohesive set.
Unlike so many wisdoms, they apply to almost all people, all of the time, and in any situation. That's why they are a truly unique collection. As a set, they provide the necessary how-life-works insights to flourish in your life and stop justifying hanging on to negativity from the past or the present.
The explanations are intentionally minimal; All wisdoms are best when they are thought about rather than simply explained. That said, most have much deeper ramifications than you will be able to discern at a quick glance.
If you're a client, any of them are worth time discussing in a session.
Wisdoms can only offer the value that they were intended for if you:
This is a commitment we should make and re-affirm whenever necessary.
You are the only person that will be with you--- 24/7--- until the day you die. No amount of wealth, health, celebrity or accomplishment will provide enduring satisfaction if you routinely justify beating yourself up.
YOU are the ONLY thing you will definitely "get" in life. And you can have no way of knowing how long that opportunity will exist for you. Learn to make every moment with yourself as pleasant as possible.
The Indian yogi, guru, and mystic named Sadhguru says, "If you are alone and safe--- and feeling dissatisfied in any way, then you are bad company".
You must learn to always be exactly the person you need--- especially when your emotions need a loving and helping hand.
Pain is a real, physical phenomenon, but suffering and feelings of dissatisfaction (in any of its many forms) are emotional reactions to whatever is happening to us. As such, we must choose to continue to suffer after an unpleasant event in our lives. Ergo, we cannot prevent many external events in our lives, but we do control how we interpret them, how often we will replay them in our heads, how much we choose to let them impact us, and for how long.
It is impossible to substantially achieve wisdom #2 without also working towards this wisdom.
If we do not already fully accept this regrettable truth we will be stuck in some form of fantasy in our reactions to life and in our responses to life events. In short, we will not be successful at achieving wisdom #3 if we don't also accept this wisdom.
Strive to understand life as it truly IS and make your plans and choices accordingly.
Learning the skills to not suffer our own thoughts and emotions (wisdom #3) is a fantastic accomplishment in life that many people around the world already do substantially achieve. However, it is not a sufficient goal. It would be silly to simply learn to accept anything that happens to us.
Most of us wish to actually engage with life in a way that will maximize our ability to flourish as much as our unique circumstances will allow it. That means making choices about what unpleasant experiences and circumstances are within our power to eliminate or improve... and then putting forth the appropriate effort to actually improve those things that we can.
By definition it is not possible for any of us to ever do more than our best. It is necessary to understand that "trying your best" is always a conditional statement. It depends on our available time, our current situational understanding, our available resources to help and a whole host of other parameters. Imperfect, or even terrible results, begin to lose their ability to emotionally devastate when we know, and understand, this wisdom: When we know that we really do always try our best.
To KNOW that we've tried our best involves only applying a "reasonable level" of situational awareness. If we are aware that we are getting ready to choose a non-trivial course-of-action--- and we believe that we are putting sufficient thought and available resources towards that course-of-action, then we have tried our best.
The future-you will never have any rational reason to regret any of your moment-by-moment choices and behaviors at any point in your lifetime.
It is not possible to actually succeed at trying our best (wisdom #6) unless we have a criteria against which to measure better and worse choices.
"You can sail a ship with no rudder; but no one can know where it's going to end up".
Be sure you are sailing through your lifetime with the best possible map and compass. Your life plan is the map and wisdom #10 is about reading your compass often enough and taking the necessary actions to course correct if possible. Wisdom #6 addresses the impossibility of anybody ever sailing a perfect straight-line between the milestones (ports) on their map.
Diversity is not just race, sexual orientation and body morphology. Understanding diversity, with depth, is understanding in a deep way that everyone else in life is not a clone of who we are.. Everyone has their own life history, intellectual inclinations, fears and priorities. So everybody else, NOT just you, is actually trying their best too (wisdom #6); even if they are behaving in a way that feels obnoxious to you.
As much as it makes us "feel smart" when we try to judge others, the fact is that nobody else is actually "an idiot" for their viewpoints, behaviors or actions. Hating or even just judging others makes it impossible to substantially achieve wisdom #3.
If we are prone to define too many things in life as "needs" we are truly dooming ourselves to dissatisfaction (failing at wisdom #3 and thus also wisdom #2). Use a sharp mental knife to separate those lists... and then perhaps further prioritize the "wants" list with equal mercilessness into lessor and greater wants.
This wisdom is appropriately applied to anything we're tempted to consider a need or want.
This wisdom alone will reap huge emotional rewards. Combined with the others, it's difficult to not reach a much more pleasant place in your emotional life.
The next wisdom is to deeply understand the enormous difference between an actual, bona fide fact--and a belief. Understanding that we all KNOW very little is necessary to keep growing. It also creates more constructive family and social interactions as we "drop the pomp."
Even the brightest and most-educated among us are all mostly ignorant; That is inevitable as humans. Understanding that reality is an important part of keeping open the doors of personal growth rather than living a life of rigid opinions that separate us from everyone that is not in the same bubble that we are. Ergo, we have failed at achieving the benefits of understanding wisdom #8 if we do not fully comprehend and behave according to this wisdom.
We can read all of the great texts on the planet and watch all of the best YouTube videos, but doing that will just eat time on our life's hourglass unless we actually spend enough time to really understand the wisdoms; and we successfully integrate the lessons into our default life behaviors. Ergo, none of the wisdoms in this powerful list of wisdoms can be "achieved": They all require application of this wisdom throughout a lifetime in order to "stay reasonably on-course".
The integration part of wisdoms (wisdom #1) is far easier when we haven't constructed a life and lifestyle around ourselves that is resisting our own values and priorities at every moment. We all have restrictions on what we feel we have the power to actually change: But the point is that we need to make it an on-going process to observe where there are frictions in our lives and do what we can to eliminate them.
THIS wisdom is necessary to honor your commitment to wisdom #2 and others.
Newtonian Earth-time is gentle, constant and inevitable. It's the smooth flow of the daily sunrise and sunset... and the smooth cycle of the seasons wherever you live. The industrial paradigm for consuming Earth-time, on the other hand, is emotionally destructive and is not inevitable.
There are many benefits of living in a highly industrial society, but that society seduces us into believing (wisdom #10) that we MUST accomplish more and more and do it all as quickly as possible. Some people are better suited to this pressure than others. But in the end, none of us are machines. Our bodies and emotions evolved to a usually gentle flow of time.
A proper commitment to wisdoms #2, #3, and #9 all requires us to monitor and make adjustments to where we try to stay on this spectrum between Earth-time and industrial-time. Learning to reconnect to time as nature intended is not strictly available to everyone. Most of us really are still at places in our lives where we are inextricably stuck in a hurry. That said, simply being aware of the industrial pressure to "always be in a hurry" can provide the impetus we need in order to reduce that pressure as much as possible whenever we sense that our mind and/or body need to recover for a while.