One of the greatest teachers around is life. Through life, we experience all kinds of things. But more importantly, these experiences come with very important, inspirational life lessons.
The beauty of these life lessons though is that you do not need to experience all of them first hand. Many people have already gone through various experiences and provided this information to the people of the world.
A good example is Bruce Lee and the life lessons he shared.
But Bruce Lee is one of the many people who have found success and have passed on valuable lessons. A lot of these lessons are lessons many people have also experienced before.
So no matter what, keep these inspirational life lessons in mind because they can lead to more success and growth in your life.
1. Never Stop Learning
Many quotes revolve around this theme. Benjamin Franklin once said that investing in knowledge pays the best interest.
There’s also Einstein’s famous quote:
“Once you stop learning, you start dying.”
These two brilliant minds aren’t wrong. Staying educated by whatever means necessary is important for many things. You do this by reading books or articles. You can also look into being a self-learner.
Learning is one of the greatest joys in life.
2. Take the Leap
Another lesson that has been said many times is “take action”.
That’s not to say you should be jumping in headfirst with no plan. However, you don’t want to be planning too much.
Many people spend a lot of time in the planning or decision phases. They make vision boards and have particular mantras while following a long list of things to do.
I’m exaggerating a little, but people can drive themselves into a rut from too much planning. Sometimes the best thing to do is to jump in and enjoy the process.
3. You Get What You Put In
One thing people tend to forget is that you get what you put in in life.
To clarify, you get what you put in based on your effort. Effort and hard work are requirements for achieving anything in life.
Sometimes, people think that you can get what you want based solely on visualizing or changing your behavior a little bit. But that’s never been the case.
The only way for you to make any progress is through effort. I improved my posture by doing specific stretches and not simply by visualizing myself in better shape.
If you want to achieve what you want in life, you need to know how much effort you have to put in to get there. This is the case with anything in life, including the habits that you want to change.
4. Be There for Others
Success in life isn’t always a solo project. It’s actually something that requires a group effort. Looking over history, there is always someone who achieved their goal due to help from other people.
With this in mind, it’s important that we show our support for other people. We don’t need to go to the extent that we’re their personal doormat or anything, but occasionally reaching out our hand for someone is nice.
This can be for someone we know or a stranger. A nice and simple gesture makes us and those who we are helping more human. It also makes the world a better place.
5. Keep Going No Matter What
Failure is something we all experience, and the degree of failure can vary. Regardless of the circumstances and the setbacks, we must not lose face and keep moving forward instead.
Failure is a harsh reality. It is also the source of some of the deepest and most personal life lessons we can experience, provided that you see failure this way.
Seeing failure this way matters because it’s the difference between giving up and getting back up and trying something new. You should avoid using the same approach over and over. Instead, use failure as an opportunity to look at new approaches and try new things.
6. Stay True to Yourself
As children, we all had big dreams about what we wanted to do in life. However, those began to change as we grew older and experienced different things. These events shifted our reality and, in some cases, we let others steer our life.
We lose ourselves and follow down a path that wasn’t our decision or something we are excited about.
You don’t want to be falling into this trap but if you have, you want to work to get out of it.
These days, it’s so important to your success and well-being that you are doing the things that make you happy and fulfilled whenever you achieve your goals.
7. Have an Open Mind
Having an open mind in today’s society is important.
Automation is rapidly taking over many industries and bringing forth more change. Various events around the world shake our realities as well, such as the coronavirus pandemic.
While events are grimmer in some cases, it’s important to have an open mind or, at least, to not fear change.
This is easier said than done as some changes in life are more drastic and are therefore harder to resist. What’s important though is that we take control of the present.
Learn to enjoy the achievements and the things that we have in our lives right now.
8. Have Big Goals
Goals are important cornerstones of our success. They are your compass, and they provide you with directions to pursue in life. However, these goals are often small.
While those goals are important, you want to make sure that you are dreaming bigger or are seeing the bigger picture.
For example, a small goal could be losing 10 pounds in a few months. The bigger goal is being able to run a marathon.
When we have bigger goals, we have better reasons for our actions. Going back to the example, this provides reasons for you to eat healthily, curb cravings, and take on endurance exercises.
Bigger goals add context and provide mental lessons as well.
Many people laugh at new ideas or tell you it can’t be done because they look only at where you are right now or they think that it’s unlike you.
Prove them wrong.
9. Be Around the Right People
People often bring up the power of association for various reasons. The biggest one is that this is our reality.
The top five people you spend time with have the most influence on your life the most, regardless if you hate the person or love them.
The key to this lesson is to make sure that the people you are spending time with are worth your time and are contributing in some way. Emotionally or directly, these people should be lifting you and guiding you towards a happier life.
10. Be Positive to a Degree
When people think of the phrase “be positive”, most jump to being positive all of the time. While it’s important for you to be positive, you need to have some sense of reality.
There are bad things happening, and it’s unfortunate. That’s part of life. But it’s not something for us to be overly negative about either.
There should be a balance between positivity and accepting reality. What this lesson entails is that you should accept this reality and start looking at your situations in a more positive light.
11. Connect With Others
Life is about what you know, but also who you know.
You already know that people have some influence on our lives, so it makes sense that the more people you know, the more people can change and help you grow.
It’s important for you to reach out to people and connect with them. Studies show strong bonds with people increase our life expectancy.[1]
Moreover, having people to turn to means more people can help you during stress.
12. Remove Your Regrets
Regrets in life are one of the hardest things in life. It’s something that can linger in our lives for decades if we allow it.
My perspective is that you can always look back at your life and ask: “what if?”
But doing that isn’t going to change anything. You’ve already played your hand, and you’re being dealt a new set of cards to play, figuratively speaking.
What’s important is to look at what you got from that – the experiences and the people that you met through those opportunities. And, of course, the lessons you learned from it.
Reflect on that, and you probably wouldn’t want to change those things. Who knows what would happen if you went a different route? But you and I both know that you would have drastically different experiences whether better or worse.
So, instead of thinking about “what if’s”, look ahead and strive to live your life with no regrets.
13. Stand Firm On Your Beliefs
This inspirational life lesson goes hand in hand with the previous lesson of staying your ground and sticking to what you believe in.
Yes, it’s important to have an open mind and be willing to change and adapt, but not to the extent of flip-flopping and easily changing our ideals.
It’s important that you develop your core values and continue to stay firm on those ideals.
Final Thoughts
There are all kinds of inspirational life lessons out there. Achieving success is not something that has to be done in one particular direction.
So take these lessons to heart and apply them every single day and at every opportunity you can.
More Inspirational Life Lessons
- 9 Inspirational Life Lessons That Will Change Your Life
- 12 Inspiring Life Lessons From Maya Angelou
- 13 Inspiring Life Lessons from Steve Jobs
- 10 Inspirational Life Lessons From Bruce Lee
Featured photo credit: Garrett Anderson via unsplash.com
Reference
| [1] | ^ | The Harvard Gazette: Good genes are nice, but joy is better |
