LIFE LESSONS - I HAVE LEARNED

                       

A lot has happened in my life since I published my list of Life Lessons I Have Learned.  As a member of the baby boomer generation I am facing my own mortality.  My parents have both passed away and with this experience I have gained even more wisdom.  Of course it is nothing extraordinary.  It is living through the experience that gives me more insight.

What I would add to this list below is that if you are honored to be with someone that you love while they are passing from this life... just keep pinching yourself to stay in the moment.  Honor them by listening to them and giving them comfort.  Do not start mourning before they leave or you will miss the greatest opportunity of a lifetime - and that is just to BE PRESENT for them.  Enjoy the memories of those last few moments because when they are over - you will relive them in your mind over and over.  

1.    Take advantage of opportunities as they arise.  If you don’t someone else will.

2.    Enjoy each moment as if it is your last.  (Sometime it will be)

3.    Listen to your inner voice.  That is your intuition.  It is your connection between your heart and your head.  If you ignore it too much, you may quiet it forever.

4.    Each one of us shapes our own reality.  You have the choice to make your reality what you want it to be.  People who constantly think that they are a victim of their circumstances, create the reality of being a victim.

5.    What you think about expands.  If you think you are happy, you will be happy.  If you think you are sad, you will be sad.  Be careful to think about only what you want to expand. (This is quite difficult to achieve at first but with a bit of exercise, it becomes easier and easier.)

6.    Create memories for your later years when you can sit back and recall your life. That doesn’t mean that you will stop making memories, however, sometimes our physical body starts to deteriorate with age, and it is difficult to do some of the more extreme pleasures that we were able to in our youth.

7.    Live your life with integrity.  When faced with a decision, reach into your heart and examine the options and then make choices that align with your integrity.

8.    Cherish silence in your life.  Create time to just be silent.  Stop your mind from all its frantic activity and just be.

9.    Be OUTRAGEOUS with your passion.  Push the limits and step outside your comfort zone.  This is a way to stretch your comfort zone.  Try to do one thing everyday that will put you outside of your comfort zone.

10. Take care of your physical body as the precious vessel of life that it is.  Feed it with nourishing food.  Exercise your muscles, drink plenty of water, and try to eliminate toxic emotions.

11.  When faced with a big challenge in life, remember how you faced this before.  Our lives will be full of mountains to climb, and with practice, each mountain becomes easier to conquer.

12. Go with the flow.  Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream.  Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.  When it feels like you are fighting with the rest of the world, you probably are.  Let go of the need to control everybody and everything around you.  If you feel like everywhere you turn there is a roadblock, that is because people react to controlling people by trying to counterbalance with their own control.  Let go of the need to control.

13.  When in doubt about how to deal with a problem, look to see how nature takes care of its problems.  Every problem in nature has a solution.  If there is an earthquake and the land can’t take the stress, it splits apart.  Think about that when you are experiencing a lot of stress in your life.  If your body can’t handle it, it will also split apart in the form of illness.

14.  Let go of the need to have other peoples’ approval.  This was an agreement we entered into when we were too young to know better.  As an adult we have only one person that we have to have approval from…. OURSELF. 

15. Be your own person in love with yourself.  Be very kind to that person that you love.  Nourish yourself with nurturing thoughts.  As an adult you now can make the right choices for your soul and spirit.  Be the parent that you always wanted to have and love the helpless child that remains inside of you.  Heal your childhood wounds in order to fulfill all of your dreams and live the life you have always dreamed of.

16. Forgive anybody that you feel has done something against you.  Ask for forgiveness if you have done anything against another person.  Most important…. FORGIVE YOURSELF.  I think we all understand the idea of forgiveness.  If we can forgive and be forgiven, it allows us to let go of negative energy and replace it with positive energy.  In addition to these two steps, however, is a third step, and perhaps the hardest to achieve.  Forgive yourself.  Once you can truly forgive yourself of your indiscretions then you are ready to let go of all the negative energy that the circumstance has created and move ahead in your life.

17. Nature abhors a vacuum.  If you find that your life feels empty or that you are continuously feeling lonely, then you probably have a vacuum in your life.  What the vacuum does is sucks in something to fill up that empty space.  If it is not filled with positive, creative plans and ideas, it will fill up with “something else”.  Sometimes this “something else” will be sadness, loneliness, and feelings of emptiness.  It is important to fill the vacuum with lots of positive and creative plans, events, and plenty of nourishing pampering ideas so that there is no place for the negative to creep in.  Once again, this takes a lot of practice to achieve, but gets easier over time.

We avoid the things that we're afraid of because we think there will be

dire consequences if we confront them. But the truly dire consequences in

our lives come from avoiding things that we need to learn about or discover.

   -- Shakti Gawain