5 Lessons I Learned or Re-Learned this Year

Introduction

As we near the end of the year, sometimes I become more reflective, asking myself if the year went well. Did things go as well as I had hoped? Could I have done something more? Could I have worked smarter or more effectively?

This year, I think we all have been forced to think about what we truly value in this life. For most of us, we have felt some form of hardship. There have been lost lives of loved ones, economic struggles, loneliness, and added stress for many. The troubles are many, but what can we learn from them? That is what matters.

Here is what I learned (or re-learned) this year:

1.     Truly Value Every Day

I am not immune from everyday problems. I can also find myself in arguments over trivial matters, or losing touch with the present moment, or forgetting what is truly important sometimes. The journey is always unfolding and not a direct path to anywhere. There are bumps along the way, and we need to keep going, keep moving toward improving and becoming something better.

Whatever this experience is that we are having, that is the same for all, yet different for all, is worth it. We need to live every day with consciousness, with a will to do something for ourselves and others. Our everyday decisions seem so minor and inconsequential at times, but the impact can be major. Collect all those minor, seemingly inconsequential moments of humanity, and they mean something when they are all put together.

For example, one person’s loneliness makes you feel like you don’t matter. But imagine the collective loneliness of humanity, and you see that we are together in this. Upon realizing that he is part of a larger collective loneliness, the loneliest person in the world may be motivated to help alleviate this suffering in his fellow humans.

There is tremendous value in every single day. Every day is a gift, and I aim to see it for what it is. Suffering can seem like a big burden, a curse, but even this is a gift. Suffering is what connects all of humanity. We have all suffered in some way, and so we should all aim to help each other when we can. Rather than running from the suffering, it can be worthwhile to connect with it and reflect on it and see that it can help us to build some bridges with one another in this life.

When I was younger, at times, I felt that I was suffering tremendously (e.g., mental, not physical pain) and that I was alone. I wish I would have spoken to someone about this back then. Many people in my life would have listened, but I kept it as my own burden. But that suffering has helped me connect with and help people, so it has been a blessing in that sense.

When I help others, I can see clearly that whatever I have suffered was nothing in the grand scheme.

Sometimes I think about my youth or the young people I have known, and it is so obvious to me that we do not truly understand all that we have during that time in our life. In your youth, you have all your energy, all the time, love, and no true responsibility of your own. Yet, our young people often have no true understanding of all they have been given, of the work and trouble it takes to support them. They have no idea of what they have and will not understand until they double in age. Even at my age (35), sometimes I wonder if I will not truly have the perspective to know what I have in this very moment until I am much older. How will I truly comprehend what I have until I am on the verge of losing it?

But rather than focus too much on that, I return to the concept that we must value the day, the now, what we have, right now. Aim to see it for what it is, the greatest glory that we could be bestowed with. Even if all seems wrong, you are here. That means something. You have the chance to do something, to turn it all around, to experience one more moment, and the next, and the next.

2.     The Right Moment is Now (Usually)

Often, I will find myself planning things out for the future. I may think: One day, I want to travel, to read all the books I would like, to tell people what I truly wanted to tell them, to write that novel, and so on. I have had all these thoughts, yet instead of waiting too long or daydreaming about it too much, I ended up jumping in and doing these things.

Through my college years and in graduate school, I always wanted to read books for fun, but I felt that I never had the time. This was a lie – I could have read more. When I finished graduate school, I decided that I finally had the time, and since then, I have read about 40-50 books per year. I’m sure I could find the time to read even more, but I have been happy with this. Now, I make an effort to read the right books, rather than focusing too much on the number. I realized that I could always make the excuse that I didn’t have the time to read the books I wanted, but if this was what I truly wanted to do, then I must make time for it now.

As another example, my wife always wanted to live in Europe, so rather than wait for the right time, in 2018-2019, she accepted a position working in France. I didn’t know French at all, and my wife had an intermediate level in the language but had not studied it for many, many years. We could have tried waiting for the right time, and it may have never come. Instead, she applied for jobs, she was accepted, and we went. We had fantastic experiences there, and bad ones too, just like with anything else in life. But at least we went. We went even though we could have waited for a better time. But if we did, we may have never gone.

I have countless stories like this – where I considered waiting to do something, but instead, I decided the time was Now, and I just did it. Often, my plans were just stories I made up in my mind to feel better about something. Think of any plans you’ve ever made that involved years into the future. Did those usually go the way you expected? Or did new things come up that interfered with those plans, time and again?

In my life, I have learned over, and over that often, we are just making excuses and waiting for a later and later time. Of course, we should probably engage in some form of planning and thinking about our life’s decisions. But often, we may just be scared to make a leap. The truth is if we keep waiting for that right time, it may never come.

If you can do it Now, do it Now. Whatever it may be that your heart is set on doing.

Of course, the world as it is now, for many of us, the time is NOT now. We all have to make our own choices in the end. For some, now is the time to take risks and do everything you ever wanted to do. For others, this is the time to be careful and stay safe. Perhaps there is a way to stay safe and still make progress on your dreams.

In essence, what I want to say is that you should not wait until tomorrow to enjoy the day. Find a way to make the best of today, for it may be all we have.

(If you do decide to take some risks, please be mindful of the point below.)

3.     What if Everyone Did What I Was About to Do? What Would Happen?

This is a Thought that has run through my head more than ever this year. Often, I see people take action, and I wonder if they would have done this if they had just taken a moment to consider what the world would be like if everyone behaved that way.

This is a Thought that can be used to help you take better actions that help more people. And also to help avoid taking hurtful or negative actions that could hurt more people.

If you watch or read the news, you will often hear about people in the world who are hurting others. And some of this is malicious, but some of this may happen just because people do not stop and consider: What if everyone did this? An example is littering. When someone on the streets tosses a cigarette butt, or a soda can, or anything else, many of us may fail to see how this matters in the grand scheme. But humans follow the behavior of others quite closely. If a parent does this, then his kids probably will, too, perhaps even his neighbors. If everyone did this, the streets would be filled with so much trash and make our cities look like public waste bins.

This thought (What if everyone did what I was about to do?) helped me become a more sociable person. Being sociable is not so difficult. If you keep other people in mind, then you will quickly improve your social skills. Perhaps when you are in a group, you like to take charge and lead the way. That is fine, but what if everyone behaved this way? It would be difficult to have fun if everyone wanted to lead the way, right? So perhaps, instead of assuming you are the leader and making decisions, you could propose something and see if people agree. You could still lead, just not in a forceful or intimidating way.

Some basic questions you can ask in different situations are:

• If everyone did this, how happy would we be?

• If everyone did this, how much suffering would this cause?

• If everyone did this, how much would we accomplish?

• If everyone did this, how many lives would be lost?

• If everyone did this, would it be helpful or hurtful?

4.     Love is What Matters

The bonds we have are not to be taken for granted. We need to remember to connect with the most important people in our lives. Day by day, these bonds can grow or recede, but they rarely stay static.

When we have love, we are alive, but we aren’t just meant to have it, but also to give it, spread it, and nurture it.

The greatest pain of our lives is when our love is lost. Either a relationship ending, or of course, a death. This is sending us a clear signal that out of all the things we worked on and strived for in our lives if we didn’t have love, then we didn’t have much.

That pain is only there to remind us of how much that love truly mattered.

One of the best feelings to have that can transcend any tactile sensation is to have love. Love is not just the joy of being cared for but also the joy of caring about someone. When you are cared for and loved, you naturally have more time and attention to love others.

When you can connect to the common experience of joy, pain, laughter, loss, sorrow, desire, and apprehension, you then can love. So if you are human, even if you have never known love, you already have it in you, as this is something that can never be taken away, the will, need desire for, and power to love.

Pay attention to the ones you love, and further, pay attention to that feeling of love. When we do this, we see that we could do more. Make the time for that person asking for your love. It could be anyone that shows up in your life today. It may even be everyone.

Perhaps everyone who crosses paths with you today, intentional or not, was just there to ask for your love.

They may all cloak themselves, hiding their true intention, to get your love, making up other reasons that they need to see you, but perhaps, that was the one true reason. How will you respond to them?

I have been making efforts to stop the bounds and limits of my love. When I see someone that needs it, I hope I am there. I hope you see this too and can expand in your love.

In another post titled The Path to a True and Fruitful Life, I also discuss the importance of love.

5.     Make Your Own Path

In my business, I often think that I should do something because it is what most other writers or business people are doing. Yet time and again, I find that I am pleased to create my own path. This way, if I make mistakes, they are my own, and I learn from them. Nothing terrible has ever happened to me. I write, publish, promote, learn, and grow, and that is all. The rest are the details.

Something I have come to understand through the years is that I don’t like to promote. This often happens for writers, as they usually prefer to write. I am the same. I recognize the need for promotion – I do it, but I aim to spend the least amount of time that I can on this. I wish to do it effectively and quickly, and that is all. I have developed systems over the years to help accomplish this.

I prefer to spend my time writing, learning, growing, loving, and spreading my messages in multiple languages so that more people can benefit from what I have to say. There is only so much time and energy to put into a day. Ask yourself if you truly believe in what you are doing. When I promote too much and invest too much time in that, I feel like I have wasted my time because I have not contributed something new and useful to the world.

Are there activities like that in your life? Can you do them less and still get the positive results you need while minimizing the time you spend on them?

The point here is this:

Don’t feel that you must follow a certain path. Define yourself as you would like to be. Create your own route that only you will go on, that no one else could imitate.

When I was a young child, people always told me that I looked like my father, and perhaps at that time, I thought I was him or destined to be like him. Other times, people confused my brother and me as twins (we were close in age and similar in size, but we looked different, actually). So I was often compared to someone else. Then in time, I realized that I was my own person and that I needed to pave my own path.

Life isn’t as fun, or meaningful living in another’s shadow – you have to find your own way. Be willing to accept help or guidance, but in the end, the choices you make are your own.

If you would like to learn more about my path, or My Purpose Journey, read here.

Concluding Thoughts

This year, I learned or re-learned the following:

• Truly value every day

• The right moment is now (usually)

• The value of thinking: What if everyone did what I was about to do? What would happen?

• Love is what matters

• Make your own path

These are some of the most important lessons that have come to me this year. I hope you take the time to reflect on what you learned this year and what you can improve next year.

What I Learned in the 5th Grade

I sometimes think back to the 5th grade because it was a tough year for me, but I learned some great life lessons that year. My teacher, Mr. Strombeck, taught me so much, and most of what I learned wasn’t even a part of the curriculum. He had a reputation for being one of the hardest, most strict teachers in the school, yet I’m glad I was in his class.

I Learned to Read (and Think)

This teacher gave us reading assignments that somehow seemed to leap beyond anything I had ever been required to read in the past. They were short stories that it seemed like an adult or young adult may read. He told us to read them on our own time and then answer some comprehension questions that I thought were quite difficult. These stories were not typical kid stories. It was literature. Complex themes and ideas were floating around, and it was not always explained so directly within the story. You had to figure it out on your own or come to your own interpretation of what was going on.

I am convinced now that he wanted to get us thinking. He didn’t want to explain the story to us so that we could learn his explanation. Mr. Strombeck wanted us to figure it out and make sense of the story for ourselves – that is what reading is truly about.

This was the first time I learned to ask myself questions as I read. Why did this character behave this way? What were they trying to accomplish? Why did they get emotional or upset at a certain point? When or where are they, and why does it matter?

I remember that the first stories he assigned were incomprehensible to me. I felt lost. But I kept reading and trying to understand, and at the end of the year, my reading skills had vastly improved. In the 6th grade (the following year), I read the highest-level books in the school library, which were 8th-grade level. I’m sure this was because my 5th-grade teacher had actually challenged me to truly read and to truly think.

My Actions Have Consequences

Surely, children younger than the 5th grade learn that their actions have consequences. Every child knows that if they behave badly enough, they will get punished or at least have some privilege or reward taken away. But I learned this lesson in a deeper way here.

One of my friends needed an eraser, and he was only maybe 15 feet away. I didn’t want to get up from my desk without permission, so I gently tossed an eraser to him, and he caught it.

“That’s 5 days detention right there,” the teacher said sternly, looking at me.

He took a moment to write me up and hand me the form. I was quite upset, as I thought it was obvious that I had not violently thrown anything or tried to hurt anyone. But I knew if I tried to argue the point, it would just make things worse.

To this day, I’m not entirely sure if the punishment of 5 days detention was really warranted. It seems extreme for the gentle toss of an eraser.

Yet as a child, the lesson hit home – Be careful with what you choose to do. Think through your choices. Your actions have consequences.

In hindsight, I think this fifth grade teacher was trying to actually prepare us for life, and not just for the sixth grade.

I sense that the message he was giving me and to the class is that even if this punishment seems harsh, in real life, people often commit actions that appear to be harmless and yet which can result in horrible consequences. Also, in real life, sometimes minor crimes result in harsh sentences, and some criminals get off for free. Things are not always fair.

“It’s not easy, but sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do.”

I was horrible at paying attention in class, and so I believe I was struggling in history class at one point, and my Mom had talked to Mr. Strombeck. He told my Mom that I should go to his desk the next day to discuss my options.

The next day arrived, and I was very introverted, so I was nervous about going up to him. Most of the day went by, and I never went to his desk. I was going to keep waiting and probably never go up to him. Finally, in the afternoon, Mr. Strombeck called me to his desk.

He asked me if my Mom had told me to come to his desk and talk to him, and I said “Yes.”

Then he said something like this: “I know it can be difficult to come up to an adult, but you’re going to have to learn to do this. It’s not easy, but sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do. You are the one who would like to do better in history, so you are the one who needs to come to me about it. Next time you have something on your mind, come straight to me.”

Then he gave me a few extra credit options to help improve my grades.

At the time, I think I struggled to communicate with people, especially adults. In general, I had started to develop some anxiety around socializing. Fifth grade was also the first time I was expected to give presentations in front of the class. All I can recall was having this overwhelming sense of dread when I needed to present like this world-ending disaster was happening. A girl in my class got so nervous that she would shake visibly and cry during her presentations. I probably felt like her on the inside.

The understanding from my teacher that it was difficult for me to communicate and that I was intimidated to speak with adults somehow helped me make it through the year.

Ultimately, now as an adult, I agree with him that some things will be quite difficult, but you have to do them.

Through doing those difficult things over and over, somehow it seems to result in personal growth, well-being, character, grit, and skill.

How to Use the Internet

That year (1995), I was selected to be in a group of four students who would learn extra computer skills. I don’t remember much about what we did. The group only met once per week for about an hour. At that time, I remember working on something called Netscape (a common web browser at that time).

In those days, there were less than 40 million internet users worldwide, and apparently, I was one of them. Today, there are nearly 5 billion regular internet users. There is a good chance you and everyone you know has internet access, but the world wasn’t always this way. And as I’m starting to feel older than I actually am somehow, I will remind you that I am 35 years old now.

We couldn’t have known back then that this internet thing was really going to take off. As kids, it was just an interesting way to pass the time and like a toy to play with.

Now we know the internet is much more powerful than we thought – we are all connected through it and able to share and receive as much information as we can handle.

Final Thoughts

I learned a lot in the 5th grade. I learned to read and think that my actions have consequences, that sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to, and how to use the internet.

By the way, the only things I remember learning were not actually in the course curriculum. Isn’t that interesting?

What did you learn in the 5th grade?

Or do you have a teacher who stands out to you and who helped you learn some valuable life lessons?

The Lesser Paths and Better Paths

I see regret in many people. It is painful to wake up to our lives and realize that we are on the wrong path. It may appear we have chosen the wrong job, we have sought the wrong relationship, raised our kids improperly, moved to the wrong town, and so on.

When our path is wrong, we feel it with our whole body, with the resistance of every fiber of our being wanting something else. Anything else. We want to eliminate the dead weight we carry around every day as part of our life’s burden.

However, we often forget that we needed this wrong path to see how wrong it truly was. Or we needed this wrong path to learn great lessons that would help us on the road to better paths. Or, in many cases, when we are young, no one could have talked us out of taking this path. It’s as if it were our destiny. I’m aware of many people who had a hunger for adventure and travel, and so they went to different states or even countries, only to realize that the place they truly belonged was back at home where they grew up.

I use the term “wrong path” because we all know what it means. But we must understand that a path that seems right for us in one moment can change and become the wrong path. And vice versa.

Truthfully, the wrong path does not exist. There are only better paths and lesser paths. Naturally, we will aim to take better paths and avoid the lesser ones. And when we cannot avoid them, we will wish to get through the lesser paths as quickly as we can to move on to something better.

Here is what comes to mind for me when I think of the lesser and better paths.

When I finished my undergraduate studies at Purdue University, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life. I thought it made sense to continue my studies in psychology, as I did enjoy the field. So I decided to go to graduate school, but many things on that journey ended up being wrong for me, and I chose to leave after three years with a master’s degree even though I had been expected to finish the Ph.D. degree there.

During my time there, I struggled to enjoy anything that I was doing. Everything seemed like work to fill my life with. I lost perspective, and in many ways, I stopped recognizing who I was. I had become whatever I needed to be to fulfill the role of graduate student that I had been playing. I was playing the role, not fully embodying it as my own self. For me, it was the right choice to leave.

A few years after leaving, I realized that this “wrong path” in life had given me so much. I completed advanced courses in psychology and statistics. I had published academic articles and book chapters, which helped me learn to write professionally. I learned to organize my time and work, which was something I had never done before this. I practiced presentational skills, which was an area that I always struggled to perform well in. And I learned to work collaboratively rather than just on my own. Almost everything I had done helped me to later succeed in creating my own life and business on my own terms. In the end, I had done so much in three years that I felt as if I had acquired six years’ worth of experience in that period. One of the things I disliked the most in the program was the intense workload, but I could finally see that it had all been worth it after finishing.

Understand that when we are on the wrong path, often, this is just a part of our journey toward something better. I am glad that I completed three years in the graduate program because that allowed me to gain most of the benefits from being there. If I had left earlier, I may have lived with regret, knowing that I could have learned and accomplished so much more. Yet if I had left later, I would have also lived with regret, knowing that I was living a lie, pursuing something that was not me. I had been working toward something that my heart was no longer in.

When you believe you are on the wrong path, you have to ask yourself if there is a better path available to you. If not, it could make sense to continue on the road you are on, as long as you gain something from it. However, sometimes, to find a better pathway, you must open yourself up to the unknown, to uncertainty, and explore what you can create in your life out of nothing. Sometimes it is worth taking that leap.

A realization I have come to in living my own wrong paths and seeing others live theirs is that we need these paths in our lives. In many ways, our lives may end up just being a series of lesser paths that we take, and then better paths, and then lesser, and then better, in endless cycles.

The lesser paths that we take help us learn and grow to identify those better paths. With that experience, we can then take those better paths more courageously, confidently, with greater skill, poise, and gratitude.

Ultimately, the lessons that we learn along the journey of lesser and better paths will help us become our better selves.