23 Things I’m Sure I’ve Learned
Recently I turned 23. Depending on how you look at it, this age is too young for some things and old enough for others. I mostly look at it as old enough. It feels like the clock of my life is ticking away at pace now. Nonetheless, the prospect of life isn’t too grim for me yet and I’m excited to experience the adventures that await me. More so for what they could teach me because life’s always teaching. With that said, here’s 23 random things that I’ve learned so far in my journey:
A day can mean as little or as much as you want it to mean. How you intend to remember it makes all the difference.
Thinking without action is intellectual masturbation.
People can get to you without even doing anything. Your mind can be people.
If you see a friend struggling, if you’re worried about their life’s trajectory, inquire first instead of advising. Ask them for their perspective of it. Don't assume things. And if you have useful things to say, say them constructively. Uplift them through your help. Don't make them feel bad by thinking you're being "brutally honest" or "realistic". You're just conveying that your ways of thinking are superior and they should adopt them, which is anything but helpful. This doesn't mean you coddle them or give them false hope. This means you give them a chance to be heard and understood first.
If your sense of self is tied to another person, you can never really be happy or content.
The richness of life is measured not just in money.
Sometimes two people can disagree and both be right.
When purpose wakes you up, you wake up happy.
Life does not just always offer. Sometimes you have to claim things for yourself or even bring them into existence.
Learning unapplied or unshared is useless.
When you try to make conversation with somebody and they small-talk their way out of it, or when you try to get to know someone better but they humor their way out of it, they're signalling their disinterest and it's important that you respect it. If they operate in phases and return to you in vulnerability, be present for them but don't read too much into it. Be kind but don’t go overboard with your generosity. You might end up morally exploiting yourself and blaming or hating them for it.
Nobody knows really well what they’re doing or how they’re doing it. Nobody has things fully figured out. The illusion of productivity hides those things. They just picked something, started doing it, and then kept at it. That’s all there is to it.
Creative impulse is best acted on right away.
Life is conflict and conflict is life. You will always be conflicted about something, you will always be uncertain about something. Learning to accept that and lessening the hardships that come with it is the best way to achieve peace.
A human being is a layered being. You may think you have become a new person, or adopted a different mindset or lifestyle, but the layers buried deep within you still exist and can resurface at any time.
There will always be reasons NOT to do something. Good, convincing reasons not to do something. But if you know in your heart that it is something you want to do, something you believe will be a meaningful thing to do in the long run, you should trust your heart on it.
Education doesn't stop with school and college. It happens in everything around you, in the things you watch, the conversations you engage in, the places you visit, the people you befriend, and the kind of life you live.
Our behavioral tendencies and lack of communication communicate important things to others. So it’s helpful to be conscious of what we’re communicating in non-verbal ways, because talk isn’t the only thing that tells.
Everybody else sees you through the lens of what they've seen you do and achieve. You see yourself through the lens of what you think and believe. So it becomes more difficult for you to have the faith in yourself that others show in you. It's a complicated internal conflict. But if you can step outside your own mind and look at yourself like an outsider would, assess yourself from a perspective that's not strictly internal, you can begin to see what you're capable of in a concrete manner. Not in a fleeting manner that your internal chatter shows you. Take time to draw on your experience, see how far you've come, and what you had to go through to get to this point. Remember the strength you had to show when things were tough in the past, the challenges you had to overcome and how you overcame them. Those things are not insignificant history, those are evidence of your substance. View yourself as the person you have been through time, not as the person you feel like at this moment.
Friendly breakups are real and hurt just as much as romantic ones.
Capability is a learned skill and confidence is a gained virtue.
For the most part, you don't find meaning in life. You cultivate it.
To a grateful person, happiness comes easy.
Now, to be fair, this list could go on and encompass a great deal more, but well, another thing I've learned is that sometimes the best lessons in life are the ones that we learn on our own. So for now, I end my list at 23.
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Yugal Sehgal writes about life, mindfulness, and people. He lives in India. Follow him and @drawcuments on Instagram.