9 Random Life Lessons I Wished Everyone Knew About

#1: You can’t change others — you can only change yourself

Have you ever felt frustrated with how others are not behaving the way you want them to be? Even if we told them off, they remained the same.

We try to mold other people into the shape we want them to be so that they can fit into our lives and most attempts end in failure.

Stoicism suggests that the only thing we can control is our own response. Apart from that, we have no control over anything else, especially how others behave.

You can still indirectly spark some changes to happen in others by changing yourself: your tonality, your non-verbal cues, your pitch, your mindset but that’s pretty much it. If it doesn’t work, you must continue finding different ways of molding ourself in order for others to respond.

#2: Hone Your Personas

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players — William Shakespeare

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung supported the idea of Shakespeare that in order to play their own role properly, we develop personas or social masks that we put on for different occasions.

It’s not necessarily who you are but a mask that you put on so that you can fulfill your duties in society. For example:

• At work, you put on the mask of an employee;
• At home, you put on the mask of a parent;
• On weekends, you might put on the mask of a son/daughter;

The point is, these masks are a crucial part of who we are to function in society but once you are alone, don’t forget to take the masks off, relax, and remember who you truly are under those masks.

#3: Voluntarily Spend Time In Solitude

Social media is a gift to the world, yet it’s also a curse that’s causing “forced connectedness” to happen. If you’re not careful, you’ll drown in the whirlpool of notifications from all the companies that are competing for your attention.

Instead of spending time with yourself to find out what you want in life, you end up scrolling feeds of how others are doing in their own lives which has nothing to do with you.

Scheduling time for yourself is becoming a must in this noisy world. If you don’t spend time alone to think for yourself, someone else is going to manipulate you to think for them.

The solution?

Put your gadgets away in another room and make time for yourself. You can meditate, write, read, journal, take a walk outside, anything that lets you enjoy having conversations with yourself.

If the family is getting in the way of you being alone (I know, it happens to me), try hanging a “Do Not Disturb” at your door and put on headphones.

Who knows? Sometimes silly ideas work.

#4: Make Your Workouts Suck Less

I get it, sometimes we’re so beat that the mere thought of exercising can suck. Especially leg days. I hate leg days and boring cardio.

Still, I want the benefits associated with training legs and doing cardio so the trick is to make them suck less. With the gyms out of the picture, I experimented with a few ways at home that could make myself workout:

• Listening to music of your choice (sometimes I go for lofi, weird, I know);
• Catching up on movies or TV series on Netflix;
• Watching fitness YouTubers workout;
• Watch horror video game walkthroughs on YouTube (another weird one);

I’m a believer in focusing on your workouts for the best results but I’m a bigger believer in consistency. Yes, I might be a little distracted during my workouts but compared to skipping the workouts altogether, this sounds better.

You can do this for any of the workouts that bore you so that you can turn them into something to look forward to.

#5: The Key To Long Term Performance

How do you sustain high productivity over a long period without burning out?

Rest systematically. Sleep 5 full cycles a night, take periodic breaks.

When we’re young, we grind and grind and grind until our body is screaming that it can’t take it anymore. We only recognize the signal for rest when we’re sick.

Brandon Burchard, best-selling author of High Performance Habits shared that top performers have the discipline to take breaks. They schedule rest periods and take hourly breaks even if they might not need them at the moment.

Brandon calls this the pit stops to recharge so that we can continue the grind without burning out. Again, another shameless advocacy of mine about being consistent which can only happen when you rest enough.

#6: Commit to Lifelong Learning

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing — Socrates

If you have ever wonder why you feel stuck in life, that’s probably because, at some point, you stopped learning. Your life stopped progressing because you didn’t grow your capacity.

Fun fact — many of us stop learning after we graduate from whatever our highest formal education is. Many of us were told that the purpose of education is to get a job so when we actually got it, we stopped learning.

The thing is, learning comes not only from schools and universities. There an abundance of resources online such as YouTube, Udemy, Coursera, Skillshare, and many more that are accessible at a fraction of the cost of attending formal education.

Strive to improve 1% a day and over time, the compounding interest will reward your learning in ways you can’t imagine.

Start committing to lifelong learning now!

#7: Read More Philosophies

Similar to the above, taking the time to study some philosophy can have profound effects on our thinking.

The word “philosophy” came from the Greek word “philosophia” which means the love of wisdom. All science discovery started off as a certain philosophy from someone about how the world works.

With philosophy, you get to look at the world through the lenses of the greatest minds in human history such as Carl Marx, Confucius, Plato, and many others in various fields.

Trust me, you’ll definitely come across viewpoints that you just can’t agree with and this is OK. This keeps our minds open to different perspectives and to learn more about our world.

As you go through different philosophies, you’ll also get to know yourself better since studying philosophy will challenge your mind. To criticize is to grow, which was how our world became what it is now.

#8: Practice Giving Unconditionally

I’m a stingy person. I don’t like this part of me but that’s how my life has molded me.

Whenever my parents brought gifts for others, I could see that it was out of social obligation rather than generosity. I don’t blame them since they are having a tough time with their finances.

My family had its “glory” moments with money. Until I realize we have been living with monstrous debts and our finances are pretty much down the drain.

Even now, I still find it hard to give wholeheartedly not only in terms of money but in time and effort as well. I could clearly see how the years of living in scarcity have affected me in being stingy with all my resources.

I’m taking baby steps to contribute more to the people around me but this just shows that how having bad finances can affect the generations that follow.

#9: Express to Process Information

Our brain has a limited capacity for memory.

Heck, I couldn’t even remember what I studied for my exams right after I stepped out of the exam hall because my brain just doesn’t find them useful for me to live my life.

Learning without thinking is useless — Confucius

There are a few ways that come to mind as to how we can “think” about what we learned:

• Express what you learn by writing articles, making notes, creating mindmaps;
• Associate the information learned with our daily lives;
• Dumb it down and teach;

The key is to use what we learn and make the information ours by creating outputs like above.

In Summary

These are my favorite lessons that I’d want the world to know about at this point.

If you found this article insightful, remember this — Take Action.

That’s the only way anything you find here will be helpful for your life.