“In the end, it’s not going to matter how many breaths you took, but how many moments took your breath away.” — Shing Xiong
Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Dia Thabet on lessons learned in life. Dia’s specialty is setting and achieving goals. In fact, he runs a site, 2AchieveYourGoals.com, which is dedicated to setting and achieving goals. While I’ve always been goal-oriented, I’m more of a river person with goals. I find that a lot of success is serendipity in action, made possible by pursuing a path, but being open to possibilities. I also like the growth that happens in the process, and I make sure I enjoy the journey, even when the path is tough and filled with challenges. For me it’s always been a case where tougher the challenge, the sweeter the reward.
Without further ado, here’s Dia …
10 Lessons I Learned in Life
Everyone goes through life and learns various lessons. Some of the lessons are learned the hard way.
Although we experience similar situations in life, each one of us views life and experiences differently.
The followings are 10 lessons that I have learned in my life:
Lesson # 1. Planning is essential if we want to succeed.
When I was a child, I never planned. I used to live day by day without having a clear plan on what I’m going to do. This changed when I started college. I learned that if I don’t plan, others will plan for me and that planning is a major key to success.
Once I started to plan what I’m going to do every day, I started to achieve my goals faster and I became more organized as well in my life.
Lesson #2. Look inside for happiness.
A long time ago, I used to think that material things like having fancy house, car, and traveling are the key to happiness. Boy, how wrong I was. As I started achieving material things in my life, I found that my happiness didn’t increase much. For sure material things add to my happiness, but I’ve learned that if I want to be truly happy then it has to come from within. It is a state of mind and it is up to me to make myself happy.
Lesson # 3. Mistakes are experiences and opportunities.
When I was a child, I used to get upset at myself every time I make a mistake and feel embarrassed. I used to think of mistakes as something horrible and sign of weakness.
Again, after I started getting into the personal development field, I learned that mistakes are really nothing more than opportunities and are necessary part in success. Now, whenever I make a mistake, I view it as an experience and an opportunity that has a lesson for me to learn.
Lesson # 4. Life is sweet.
When I was a child, I grew up in an environment where almost everybody kept saying life is hard and it is full of suffering. I must say that I believed them. It wasn’t until I began in the search of self improvement at the end of the 1990s that I was able to change my limiting belief about life.
I learned that it is up to me how to see and view life. It all starts with my thoughts and the way I look at the world. I started to look at life in a beautiful way and see the positive side in life.
Lesson # 5. Knowledge is power.
Like many children, I didn’t know the importance of knowledge as a child. As a child, I didn’t really care to learn much or to read much. Probably like most children, I only cared about playing.
It wasn’t until I started going to college that I realized that knowledge is power and I can use this knowledge to help myself and others. I started reading as many books as possible, although 99% of the books that I read were about self improvement and personal development.
Lesson # 6. We can’t change people.
Just like most people, I tried to change some people’s behavior whether it is a friend, family member, or colleague. What I learned is that I can affect others, but it is up to that person to change. I can’t change anyone. Change comes from within, not by force or because I want to.
Lesson # 7. Life is a choice we make.
I have learned that instead of playing the victim and blaming people and my circumstances, I always have a choice and I should take responsibility for my life. I have learned when I blame people or circumstances, my life will be filled with negativity.
Since I learned my life can’t improve by blaming others and that I have a choice, I began to understand that there is more than one interpretation for everything in life. I started to choose the positive interpretation for every event in my life and yes it is up to me to choose the positive over the negative.
Lesson # 8. Visualization is powerful.
Visualization is something that I haven’t learned as a child. Basically it was not taught to me. When I discovered the power of visualization, my life has changed dramatically in a positive way. I started to visualize my goals every night before I go to sleep and that helped me focus more on what I want to achieve in life instead of focusing on what I don’t want.
Lesson # 9. Our thoughts control our emotions.
Limiting beliefs are based on my thoughts. I learned that every event and situation has at least two interpretations, one positive and one negative. I realized that most of our thoughts humans are negative because we tend to interpret events in a negative way.
I learned that if I want to overcome negative thinking and programming, I have to examine my beliefs and start choosing the positive interpretation in situations and circumstances. After all, if I control my thoughts, then I can control my emotions.
Lesson # 10. We can achieve everything we want in life.
When I started reading self help books back in first year in college, I used to read and not apply what I read into my life. As you might have guessed, I didn’t accomplish a lot of my goals. It was only when I made a solid decision to take serious and massive action to achieve all my goals that my life has improved for the better and started to see positive results.
One of the major things that I accomplished by taking massive action is improving my singing voice. When I started taking singing lessons, I made a commitment to practice daily for around an hour and my singing voice in returns improved and got a lot better.
The important lesson that I learned is that everyone can achieve all their goals if they put what they learn into action. With being persistent and taking action, success will be knocking on your door.
Photo by Nono Fara.
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