These are the complete set of primary life tips that work as a cohesive set. Independently, some are of limited value; However, 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.
See if you can recognize why the first one IS the first one... and how the subsequent 10 connect to or supplement each other.
This is a commitment you should make and re-affirm whenever necessary. Post it on your morning mirror. There are a few wisdoms to learn and a few tricks to integrate this commitment into your life. But the starting point is to unambiguously commit to learning to ALWAYS be your own best friend rather than the person whose thoughts and emotions routinely make your life less pleasant.
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".
Think about how breath-takingly obvious that should be to all of us... and deeply insightful. If you understand this concept, then you understand life enough to get started on the path of a life free of most of the stresses and frustrations that others simply justify as a normal and inevitable part of life. They need not be.
You are the only person that will be with you--- 24/7--- until the day you die. No parent, no friend, no lover will spend even a small fraction of that lifetime with you. And, if your faith is based on a God, then surely your faith has some wisdom along the lines of "God helps those you help themselves"; Some variant of you need to do the work.
So, nobody except for you can hope to really know what goes on in your head the way you can; but, even then, only if you make it a point to really learn your own operating manual. So, learning to become your own best friend is the necessary best starting point for the best life that is possible for you. The other wisdoms provide keys to deciphering the operating manual that is unique to you.
I'll refer to this first, most important commitment and mindset as BYOBF.
There are a few behavioral traits you may need to work on in order to improve your ability to BYOBF. Commit to learning the knowledge and practicing the skills necessary to:
Listen to the podcast episode here.
If you do not already fully accept this regrettable truth you will be stuck in some form of fantasy in your reactions to life and in your responses to life events.
To be successful at BYOBF (wisdom #1) you must allow yourself to fully accept this wisdom so that your emotional reactions and physical responses to life's events are based on real possibilities rather than on false fantasies.
None of us had much (or any) control over:
It is also true for everyone that most of the outside-world things that happen to us or that we need to respond to are not in our control. However, we all have full, unambiguous power to control our responses to them and to be sure they are the best ones available to us rather than the worst ones available to us.
When we learn to control our own behaviors enough to routinely make better choices (by being less impulsive and less reactive) it is a virtual guarantee that we are making our own lives the best that they can possibly be. This logic is equally valid for all people in all situations, regardless of what good or bad fortunes have, or ever will befall you.
Listen to the podcast episode here.
Pain is a real, physical phenomenon, but suffering and feelings of dissatisfaction (in any of its many forms) are emotional conditions. As such, we must choose to continue to suffer after an unpleasant event in your life. Ergo, we cannot prevent many external events in our lives, but we do control how often we will replay them in our thoughts and for how long.
Almost all of our cultural influences teach us that it is quite "normal" to make the choice for on-going suffering... so most people do justify hanging on to negative emotions. It is normal--- but it is not necessary. With a little practice one can become better and better at simply experiencing physical and emotional pain--- but not amplifying them and extending their duration with recursive, undisciplined thoughts in your head. Most of us can learn to "let go" (not suppress) negativity when it arises in our thoughts.
After BYOBF (wisdom #1) this is, for sure, the single most important fact-of-life insight to integrate into your life in order to reduce stress and unhappiness. But often enough, two or more of these wisdoms must be considered together for guidance in times of difficulty. So, you must always understand and apply them as a set.
Listen to the podcast episode here.
Learning the skills to not suffer your own thoughts and emotions 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 you.
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.
These core wisdoms should be a sufficient toolkit for maximizing your success at "changing the things that you can". And for the rest? The core wisdoms should be a sufficient toolkit for them too.
Achieving full acceptance of the unpleasant experiences and situations that you cannot change is the trick for those. If you really can't change them, then acceptance is the only logical answer for moving on in your life without suffering constant rerun movies in your own head. Learn to simply walk by the movie theater that has all of your least favorite movies playing. Learn to simply "let go". It is a teachable and learnable skill that is available to anyone that is not too attached to their own emotional justifications.
Hundreds of millions in the world can do this. Once you know this wisdom, and understand its import, and choose to no longer be a hostage to it, then you can almost certainly learn to end the repetitive, negative emotional re-runs inside your own head.
Does that sound like a cop out to you? It shouldn't.
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 your available time, your current situational understanding, your 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 you know, and understand, this wisdom: When you know that you really do always try your best.
To KNOW that you've tried your best involves only applying a "reasonable level" of situational awareness. If you are aware that you are getting ready to choose a non-trivial course-of-action--- and you believe that you are putting sufficient thought and available resources towards that course-of-action, then you have tried your best.
If you truly understand this concept there is never any reason for regret. Sure, perhaps hindsight tells you that you should have done things differently. But that is called "learning". Learning through failures is an inevitable part of life for anyone that is trying to live well. There is never a good reason to suffer regrets: Alway honor yourself with the knowledge that you have always tried your best--- and it is impossible for anyone to do any better than that. Just commit to doing better next time. A commitment to trying to learn something from any "failure" is often the best way to turn life's lemons into lemonade. It is for this reason that developing a growth mindset is part of a BYOBF commitment.
Once you've truly committed to BYOBF (wisdom #1) this wisdom will assure that you can always feel pride and respect about who you are right now and always... regardless of any of life's situations or experiences or results.
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 you. Everyone has their own life history, intellectual inclinations, fears and priorities. Everybody else, NOT just you, is actually trying their best too (wisdom #5); 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.
To think otherwise is quite ignorant of how life really works for all humans.
The sooner you come to recognize this the sooner you will experience far less frustration, indignation (or even anger) in your own life and the kinder you will become to yourself and to everyone you interact with.
This insight is key to leaving a legacy of "good ripples" in the world versus being just another contributor to human dysfunction in your family, among your friends, and on the planet.
So, take the log out of your own eye, take a chill-pill, and stop living in a false understanding of how you and all other humans work. It's fine, and necessary for all of us to draw inferences about everyone we interact with. But... hold those inferences lightly (you could be wrong) and know that virtually everyone is just as "right" as you are per their life experiences. So, if you need to, or want to, engage with them, you must start with the understanding that they ARE "good people" doing their best (wisdom #5) per their life experiences just the same as you are.
How can any of us "look down on" or vilify any other human that is doing the best they can? Granted, you may strongly disagree with another person's position or behavior, but this wisdom teaches us to engage everyone with an honest appreciation and respect. Any other kind of engagement is based on ignorance and or ego (self-protection/spiritual weakness).
Your life will become much more pleasant if you do--- and you will become a member of the "good life ripples team" rather than a member of "just another unwise human."
If you are prone to define too many things in life as "needs" you are truly dooming yourself to dissatisfaction. 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 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.
It's impossible to succeed at BYOBF if you keep convincing yourself that you still haven't even met your minimum needs for a pleasant life. Ergo, your life can't become pleasant until you "get more". You must always practice being grateful for what you already DO have... right here and now.
Wants and needs apply to NOT just things... but also non-things like goals and desires.
The next wisdom is to deeply understand the enormous difference between knowledge and 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."
Simply accumulating INFORMATION and OPINIONS in your head is not the same as knowledge, even though most people wrongly conflate those terms.
Mostly, you may only truly know those things that you have personally observed or experienced in life: Those things you have personally experienced through your own 5 senses PRIOR to trying to interpret them. It is natural and necessary to try to interpret things; but wisdom makes us aware that this is also the step when personal biases and ignorance begin to skew things from actual knowledge to a softer and gentler "I believe I know".
Do you see the difference? It's critical for your own emotional equanimity and to making the best possible ripples with others.
We are all mostly ignorant; That is inevitable as humans. Understanding that reality is an important part of keeping open the doors of spiritual growth rather than living a life of rigid opinions that separate you from everyone that is not in the same bubble that you are.
You 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 your life's hourglass unless you actually spend enough time to really understand the wisdoms; AND you successfully integrate the lessons into your default life behaviors.
At some point, as quickly as possible, you should stop searching for magic pills and short-lived inspirations and start the much more important and mundane business of integrating. It is the only way to reap the rewards.
This is an appropriate time to mention the utility of very simple meditation skills that are, I am convinced, a necessary skill for moving us all to the right along the spectrum of being a highly impulsive and reactive humans towards becoming a constructively responsive human being.
The integration part of wisdoms is far easier when you haven't constructed a life and lifestyle around yourself that is resisting your growth at every moment. We all have restrictions on what we feel we have the power to actually change, but the point is that you need to make it an on-going process to observe where there are frictions in your life and do what you can (Wisdom #4 and #5) to eliminate them.
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.
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 you need in order to reduce that pressure as much as possible.
One of the most important skills one can gain from committing to a 10-minute daily meditation is to learn how to let go of the emotional pressure of being in a hurry for just 10 minutes a day. In effect, learning the skill to actually suspend the incessant emotional pressure of industrial-time at will.
The time pressures of the current economic/cultural paradigm will only grow as we integrate ourselves further and further into working seamlessly with computer technologies and experience AI increasingly competing for most jobs. So, while modern realities for most of us precludes any permanent step-back from this industrial-time, having the ability to step-back for just 10-minutes any time you feel overwhelmed is a marvelous tool for shedding the awful emotional stress of feeling overwhelmed and out-of-control. One can get one's head back together before stepping, by your choice, back into "the matrix."
Simply knowing good advice does little for you. You must find ways to successfully integrate good advice into your own life.
Below is a growing smattering of brief tips.
At some point, as quickly as possible, you should stop searching and start the much more important business of doing... of integrating. Doing is the only way to reap the rewards. Searching is too often a bit of a compulsive search for a magic answer.
No, it is not. The goal is to be able to respond appropriately to life rather than to react impulsively to it.
Stress is a great example. Stress can be a phenomenal motivator. The problem comes only if you experience it negatively--- which is exactly what most people do. When you are capable of managing the ON-OFF switch, then stress is no longer emotionally perceived as "stress". Instead, the activity level is one that you recognize is ultimately a choice you can turn on and off as it suits your wants and desires.
It is impossible for all difficult situations to get resolved the way we want. One can only "try your best". But no disaster is a complete loss if you puzzle out what you can (perhaps even what you should?) learn from it. Many unpleasant experiences can teach us lessons about how to better avoid a repeat--- or, how to respond more constructively if a repeat does occur again.
So, make it a point to reflect on your experiences long enough to learn what lessons there may be for you. And then, let it go so that you can experience the here and now deeply rather than suffering over spilt milk.
Buddhism has a great expression. It says, "Before Samadhi, chop wood, carry water. After Samadhi, chop wood, carry water."
Contemporary psychology recognizes the inevitability of the "Adaptation Principle". It is not possible to completely escape the grips of this biological adaptation. We will always, more-or-less, get used to, any familiar situation in life. That applies both to wonderful changes in our lives and awful changes in our lives.
Trying too hard (which each of us must define personally), to keep life feeling "exciting" is quite impossible and will thus eventually lead to negative feelings in life if we don't learn to back-off from such an over-pursuit. Many spiritual seekers and personal growth enthusiasts are unknowingly addicted to succumbing to this doomed effort by constantly seeking new "motivations" as old ones grow emotionally dull.
The best antidote? It is simply to be aware of the inevitability of the "adaptation principle" and to only push against it with a level of energy that feels sustainable to you. And specifically for people trying to spiritually grow; don't allow the boredom of familiarity derail the important effort necessary to actually integrate wisdoms into your behavior so that you can reap the very real rewards of freeing yourself of ignorance (yeah, yeah, you know what I mean) and reactivity.
In the end, even if you succeed in become objectively very wise, it will not "feel" exciting for long. You will still need to "chop wood and carry water" the same as before because we all have life chores to do. Finding the correct balance of everything in your life is part of learning your own operating manual. It will always be a dynamic process of letting go of some past processes and embracing new ones. But seeking too high a level of constant adrenaline rush cannot last forever. The quicker one absolves oneself of THAT behavior the better off you are likely to be.
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