What Are Life’s Hardest Lessons?
Some are mine from 51 years on this pale blue dot, others I took from a wonderful and short article from Jasmin Mous, one I learned from podcast interviewing a brilliant psychologist, Dr. Guy Winch and from a similar discussion with a wonderful therapist named Terry Real, an MD/Author/Podcaster named Peter Attia, and I end with a happy lesson from singer Tony Bennett.
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Health is all you have. (Mous)
Live now. Love now. Don’t think about doing it later because nothing in the future is guaranteed, so please do it now! (Me)
You get to know what people are really like once you go through a tough time. (Mous)
Rejection isn’t real. It’s just an evolutionary echo. For 200,000 + years the feeling of rejection was an early detection tool to keep you from getting kicked out of the pack…which meant certain death…which meant no passing along of your genes. The point: those with the most super-sized tendencies for feeling rejected are us today (Dr. Winch) and we don’t need them. They aren’t even real 99.9% of the time. “You can’t be abandoned as an adult, you can only merely be left” (Terry Real).
Money, power and looks will not matter in the long run. We’re all going to be old, seeing things differently one day. (Mous)
You will experience many failures. What matters is how you get up, not what happened to you. This applies to everyone, as much Hugh Jackman as you and me. Fall down 7 times, get up 8. (pretty much everyone)
Life is tough. You can be high on life one second and losing everything the next second. (Mous)
No one can make you feel a certain way. Only you. You are your own happiness and you are your own grief. So invest first in yourself (Me)
Accomplishment is are you good at what you do. Success is “are you passionate about what you do?” (Attia)
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And some timeless wisdom from singer Tony Bennett, eulogizing Amy Winehouse who died far too young