7 Key Life Insights

There are so many insights that would be appropriate but here are the seven I chose to share.

They’re not presented in a style particularly suited for younger people but no doubt she would have affected the necessary translations!

Please feel encouraged to add your own thoughts and ideas in the comments!

1. The secret to a happy life lies within. Follow your passion.

You’ve been brought up with social media and the Internet promising quick fixes for all your needs. This helps perpetuate the myth that the answer to your problems and everything you think you need, exists ‘out there’ somewhere.

Stop scrolling for a moment and find a mirror. 🙂

Look straight ahead and marvel at the magnificent being that you see. All the strength, creativity, and ingenuity you require to lead the life you want, is to be found right there.

Look outside of you if your aim is to please others and feed your ego. Look within if you want to activate your passion and feed your soul.

2. Measure your success by how you feel, not by what you have

We’ve been conditioned to believe that to be happy we need to be successful and that success is measured quantitatively by the relative material wealth and possessions we possess.

This commercially driven notion may suit a small minority but keeps the great majority enslaved as success –and the happiness it is supposed to bring –remains elusive.

When you redefine success to mean your experience of happiness and inner peace, opportunities to achieve it will appear frequently and require surprisingly little effort.

3. You are your most important investment

Given the nature of the first two insights, it may come as no surprise that you need to look after and develop yourself.

You are the secret to your own success.

So, it follows that there is no better return than that which comes from investing time, energy, and money to develop your own self-belief, knowledge, skills, and creativity.

4. Change brings opportunity. Learn to embrace it.

It is human nature to be wary of change, even to fear it … because of the uncertainty that it represents.

Your life has been spent nurturing and developing your persona into what it is today. Your ego – as the defender of your persona – views change as a threat to the status quo. Creating a feeling of fear is the ego’s ingenious way to stop change in its tracks.

Yet, change is the primary engine of growth. Without change, the challenge that it provides, and the dynamic response that it initiates, our ‘creative muscle’ will simply wither away.

When life is relatively stable, change can seem daunting and that can give rise to fear.

However, once you learn to recognise that change is the bringer of new opportunity – and your friend –you can work to develop a more welcoming relationship with it.

5. Reality is not what it seems

You can reinvent your relationship with others by learning to question the nature of reality.

The truth is that your reality is seldom the reality of others, or even reality itself!

The intolerance, anger, and violence that many seem prone to, is just a symptom of an inability to appreciate different perspectives.

Remember how I spoke of the ego’s need to defend your persona? Well, your outlook on life – your perspective, if you like – is part of that.

If someone else’s perspective is incompatible with your own, then your ego will go to work to shut it out of your life, either by ignoring it or confronting it.

Learn to suppress that urge and, instead, embrace the view that there are as many perspectives as people in the world.

Not only will this open your mind to other possibilities, but it will bring about a step change in your relationships with others.

6. Live and let live

A life of complete freedom is a life where we have free will to do what we please, unconstrained by boundaries.

But if each of us were to enjoy the freedom to think, act, and behave in any way we liked collective mayhem would more than likely be the result!

That’s why we have such a plethora of norms, rules, and laws governing what society finds acceptable and what not.

Staying within the rule of law, is there a simple principle we can adopt that will promote our ability to exercise free will and live with freedom, without causing chaos?

Yes. We can sum it up as ‘live and let live’.

Live freely, live the life you desire, have fun, experiment, and do whatever it is that pleases you. Just be sure to do so in a way that respects – and does not impinge on – the ability of another or others to live the same way.

Simple!

7. Trust your emotions

Our world values logical, rational behaviour. We can be unfairly judgemental of people who act in what we regard to be an ‘overly emotional’ way.

Because of this, we are often encouraged to suppress our emotions.

The more we do so to meet the norms and expectations of others, the more we come to distrust and even despise our emotional selves.

But, have you ever stopped to think about why we have emotions?

Actually, they have a very important role to play. They represent a sophisticated guidance system.

‘Feel good’ emotions are there to reinforce the direction we are taking. They steer us towards more empowering experiences that bring growth and development.

‘Feel bad’ emotions are indicators that something about the path we are on is not in our best interests and that we should make a change.

By suppressing or ignoring our emotions, we can easily miss opportunities to change and adapt what we are doing and follow the road less travelled towards greater happiness!