Life Lessons Most People NEVER Learn

If you could go back in time and talk to a younger you, what would you say? You would no doubt give your younger self some stock picking tips. You might reveal when life-changing events would take place and discuss mistakes you've made in your life.

One thing you should probably teach yourself is something that a lot of adults never learn. When you fail, don't worry about it. Definitely learn any lessons you can, then move on. A failure is just an event. It's the opposite of a success. Both failures and successes don't describe or declare who you are.

They're just things that happened in your life. If you brood over your failures, you're going to suffer a lot of needless pain and frustration. You might also find yourself scared to do many things because you're afraid you'll repeat your failure.

You're going to fail a lot. You may have already had lots of failures in your life. It's a shame if someone didn't teach you that failures aren't that big of a deal when you're young.

Look at Your Failures like a Rainy Day.

"Into each life a little rain must fall."

We often hate rainy days. We have a lot to do. We have to get out of our homes and handle our business. When it's rainy you hate to leave your cozy abode.

If you're caught outside when it starts to rain that could be a problem. Maybe you forgot to put a spare umbrella in your car. You're out running errands and all of a sudden a rainstorm appears out of the blue. Dashing in and out of your car getting things done could mean you'll get soaked. If you don't pay attention, you could slip and fall because of the rain, injuring yourself.

There are a lot of reasons to dislike rainy weather.

Yet nature needs rain to produce so many things we depend upon. If it stopped raining tomorrow the plant-based food you would eat would suffer. Rain is required by Mother Nature to produce the fruits and vegetables you love to eat.

You can look at your failures like rain. See the positive side of them as well as the negative.

Every time you've failed in your life that event has helped shape the person you are. Failures can be marvelous teachers if you let them. When you embrace failure as a statement of who you are, you limit yourself.

A failure isn't who you are. It's just an event. It's just something that happened. The same can be said for successes. You probably know someone who brags every time he achieves something. It's as if he believes himself to be a success, when that's definitely not the case. He's just a person who experienced a success.

Learn from Michael Jordan How to Treat Your Failures.

Michael Jordan is considered by many to be the best basketball player who ever lived. He won six National Basketball Association championships in eight years. If he took his failures to heart, that would've never happened.

Jordan missed more than 9,000 shots in his career. He lost nearly 300 games in his life. On 26 occasions he took what could've been a game-winning shot, but he failed.

He says he was so successful because of his failures. He would learn from them and move on. As soon as he missed a shot he didn't let it get to him. He understood it wasn't a statement of his ability or inability as a basketball player. It was just a mistake. He learned to do things better in the future, and he moved on.

You need to do the same if you beat yourself up too much when you fail. This is definitely something that should be taught to our younger people. It's better to learn that lesson early in life than as an adult, if that adult ever learns it at all.

Practicing gratitude can be so rewarding. It's amazing how the moment you take time to be grateful for all you have, you're given more to be grateful for. This is something that should be taught early on in a person's life. You're never too young to appreciate all your blessings.

This is often a lesson we learn too late. We take things for granted. We assume they're always going to be there. Then one day we wake up and the love of our life is gone.

Maybe we lose a family member. The company you work for goes bankrupt and while you made a lot of money over the years, you didn't appreciate your income and take care of your finances.

These are just a few situations where conscious gratitude can teach you a valuable lesson.

So many of us believe we need more than we have. Society always has us chasing the brass ring. That's fine if you're a driven person. It's not fine when you're so focused on getting something more that you're not grateful for what you've already got.

A Practice of Daily Gratitude Makes You Healthier.

This is really amazing. There are a lot of studies which show practicing gratitude is a powerful stress-reliever. The people that set aside time to think about all their blessings every day have significantly less stress and anxiety in their lives.

Since stress is both a symptom and cause of so many serious health problems, practicing gratitude will instantly make you healthier. It will extend your lifespan. This is something we need to teach our children when they're very young. It leads to compassion, because when you realize you have so many things to be grateful for, you see others that aren't as fortunate as you.

You develop compassion and sympathy for those people. You become more of a caring and kind person that offers assistance to people who need a helping hand.

You Don't Know What You've Got until It's Gone.

That's an old saying that's so apropos here. It speaks about the grief and emotional pain you experience when you lose something great in your life.

It's a sad but unfortunately true statement for a lot of people. It means that you never fully appreciate the great things in your life until they're gone. Taking time to practice gratitude daily can keep this from happening to you.

Hug your parents. They're the only ones you'll ever have. They may not have been perfect, but they were there for you. Tell your friends that you're so lucky to have them in your life. Respect your finances. You could lose your job in the blink of an eye.

Start taking care of your possessions. Practice gratitude by having regular maintenance done on your vehicles. Be extremely grateful for your health and well-being. Even if you suffer physically or mentally in some way, things can always be so much worse.

If you have some young people in your life, teach them this lesson. Gratitude makes you feel so much better about yourself. It's a stress-reliever and it creates an emotionally healthy person. Start practicing gratitude regularly and you'll find the universe gives you even more to be grateful for.

I bet the following scenario has happened to you. You had some big event on the horizon. Maybe you had to give a presentation at work. Perhaps you were trying to build up the courage to ask someone out on a date.

Whatever it was you were preparing for, it was huge in your mind. The possible rewards were amazing. If everything went perfectly, you were going to feel like life is beautiful.

Unfortunately, if you're like most people, your brain started to paint a different picture. Suddenly you saw so many different ways that you could fail. Every time you thought about the possibility of failure, the results looked worse and worse.

This is what our brains do to us from time to time. It's a self-defeating practice but one that's unfortunately common.

Let's get back to our example. Imagine that you gave that presentation at work ... and it didn't go very well. You asked out the man or woman of your dreams and were turned down cold.

Were the actual results of failure as bad as you thought they would be? In almost every case, your overblown imagination created disastrous results that were never realized.

Stop Beating Yourself up Over Something That Hasn't Happened Yet.

The results of failure in your life are almost never going to be as bad as your imagination makes them out to be. Maybe this is a part of some ancient survival instinct. You convince yourself not to take some action because you're afraid it will harm your existence mentally, emotionally or perhaps physically.

It's a shame this happens and that so many people go through this. You can keep yourself from enjoying so many amazing experiences if you let this thought process keep you from taking action.

Look at your own life. Think about some big failure you obsessed about before it happened.

It might be that you created the failure by thinking about it all the time. Whatever the case, the results of that failure were probably nowhere as damaging or impactful as your imagination led you to believe they would be.

This is something everyone should be taught at a very early age. Our internal conversations can sometimes paint a dismal picture of possible events. Why not choose to imagine amazing positive results instead?

When you start telling yourself negative stories internally, stop. You can even say the word stop out loud. You are always in control of your thoughts. Choose to think of positive rather than negative potential outcomes and you're more likely to enjoy success than failure.

Some people believe they're unlucky. They think that life has simply decided to keep them from being happy. They believe the universe knows full well who and where they are, and is constantly following them around causing bad things to happen. These people believe no goodness will shine on their lives.

You hear them say things like, "Everyone in my family has always been broke. We're not meant to have money."

If it's not money they feel that's been disallowed in their lives, it's something else. They're just not intended to have joy or a good relationship or whatever else they desire. It doesn't matter how hard the person with this mindset works, he's just not going to get the things he deserves from life.

Habits Define You, Not Chance.

Blaming the universe or fate or some greater being for what's missing in your life is pointless. This is nothing but an excuse for not taking action and making changes. A person with this mindset can simply give up.

After all, no matter what he does he's never going to get everything he wants. It simply isn't going to happen. In his mind, he could have all the tools and resources and skills necessary to achieve his greatest desires. But it will simply never happen, so why waste any time trying?

Yes, it's true that luck can deal you a devastating blow or a wonderful reward. If you go through life depending on good luck to give you everything you need, you're probably going to have a lot of unhappiness.

Don't look at life like that. You're cheating yourself out of so many wonderful experiences. The habits you practice every day are going to create your reality. Your habits define your experiences. Depending on fate to decide to treat you nicely means you have no control over the life you live.

You Can Play the Lottery or Create Wealth Yourself.

Imagine that one of your major goals is incredible wealth. You can achieve that by picking the correct lottery numbers. Unfortunately, the odds are stacked against you. In the biggest lotteries, you have one chance in several hundred million of winning.

You can alternately decide to practice daily habits that create wealth. When you choose this path, you control your financial picture. You learn the things you need to do every day to build up wealth over time.

That's just one example of how your habits create your reality. You can practice the habit of whining and moaning about your life and all you're going to get in the future is more whining and moaning. You can also take control and start practicing daily habits that create the reality you desire, because it's your habits that define you.

What's the most important commodity in your life? It's time. You can never get back any time you wasted or spent inappropriately. A lot of us beat ourselves up when we think about all the time we've wasted in our past.

That's okay, as long as we've learned our lesson. It's a shame this isn't something that's taught early in life. Your parents might have told you as a child that you need to have a list of priorities. That probably didn't mean anything to you at the time. You were young and had your whole life ahead of you.

Then you blinked your eyes and winded up far removed from your childhood. You've got several decades behind you as an adult. You regret not having paid attention to priorities over the years.

You know that what you prioritize highly gets the most of your attention. This happens subconsciously and consciously. The person who prioritizes becoming wealthy above all other things is very likely to achieve that goal. His relationships may suffer, unless he places them high up on his list of priorities as well.

Have You Written down Your Priorities?

You don't have to do this with pen and paper. You can use your smartphone or your computer. That way you'll always have your list of priorities available. By the way, this should be something you review constantly. You're an entirely different person now than when you were younger. You're going to be a different person in a few years in so many ways.

This means you should constantly check your list of priorities and see if you've got them in the right order.

At the top of your list you want to jot down the things that are most important to you. When you first do this, don't worry about misspelling words or making complete sentences. You just want to get your thoughts down on paper. Prioritize the top 10 things in your life. These are your values. They are the things that are important to you.

When you're finished, rank them. Put your most important value or goal at the top. Look at the list. What do you think? What are you going to spend the most time on?

Can you make a plan to spend more time and effort on priority number one than number five? That's what you should do, because your highest priority is the thing in life that is of the utmost importance to you.

Repeat the Process for the Next Few Days.

Do the same thing again tomorrow. You want to do this because things may pop into your head that you didn't think about. You might think that won't happen with goals or values that are super important to you. Believe us when we say that it does. When you go through this exercise for three or four days in a row, you'll have a very clear picture of the things that are important in your life.

Then you can move forward with more focus and productivity. It's a shame this isn't taught to children. When it is taught, young people are so busy with so many things that they might forget the lesson. No matter where you are in life right now, take this to heart. Your actions create your reality and priorities can help you decide what receives the most action in your life.

Think about a time in your life when you needed more money. You might not have been totally broke, but you weren't exactly living the high life. You could have struggled every month just to pay your bills. This is a situation a lot of people have experienced.

It's times like these when you think, "If I only had more money. If I made 'X' more dollars every month, life would be so much easier."

Would that really be true? Can more money instantly make your life so much better? If you're honest with yourself, you know that money is not some magic cure-all. You can't throw money at any problem and watch the problem disappear.

Sometimes When You Get More Money, It's Never Enough.

You've probably have heard stories about millionaires and billionaires who are difficult to be around. They're controlling, manipulative, and no one likes working for them. This isn't true of all wealthy people of course. In some cases though, people with more money than they ever need are just terrible human beings.

When they reach some impressive monetary level in their lives, they celebrate. Then not much later, they want more. There's never enough money. They could have all the money in the world and they would probably start looking at other planets to see if there was any money there!

This is because money doesn't fix emotional issues.

If you've been both broke and wealthy, you probably prefer the latter situation. You can do so much good when you have excess wealth. You can help the people you love. You can assist charities and organizations that do good around the world. What you can't do with money is change emotional and mental issues that you need to address some other way.

This is why so many wealthy people are never happy. They think getting to that next rung on the financial ladder will finally give them all the happiness and fulfillment they're looking for. But since money can't cure problems of the soul, they're constantly unhappy.

Money Is a Commodity, Not a Magic Pill.

Money is just a thing. It used to be that money was only physical in nature, but now money can be digital. You transfer numbers out of your bank account into the account of someone else, and no physical money changes hands. Whether you slide your plastic or pull out some cash to purchase something, money is just a commodity.

It makes things happen. You can pay your mortgage and your utility bill with it. Money is great for buying gifts for your loved ones. So there are definitely reasons why you'd want to have enough money to live your life comfortably and not stress over your finances.

Just remember that money's not a magic pill.

Your doctor can't prescribe you more money to fix some physical health problem. Money won't make you a social superstar if you're a loner who is always looking at life negatively.

This is something that should be learned earlier in life than it often is. Develop money skills. Learn to budget and treat your finances with respect. You should also stop expecting money to cure every problem in your life, because it can't.

A lot of adults never grasp the true definition of insanity. You might be thinking of some defining terms yourself. While there could be many definitions of that word depending on the situation, there's one that we'd like to talk about.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results."

That's a pretty simple definition. It's been credited to Albert Einstein, one of the smartest humans ever to walk the planet. Whoever came up with that definition is absolutely on the money.

Think of how many times in your life you suffered from this practice. We all have. We tried something and failed. So we tried it again, doing the exact same things we did before. The reward was once again failure.

Sometimes we do this unconsciously. We don't consciously choose a certain set of behaviors. However, that's exactly what happens.

You'll hear people say that they always choose the wrong type of partner. By saying this out loud, they're virtually guaranteeing they're going to continue to do the same thing. What you speak often times becomes your reality because it's planted into your subconscious.

Simply put, if you don't change your actions, you're not going to change the results you get from those actions.

People Should Be Taught This Insanity Definition Early in Life.

Do you have a few extra pounds you'd like to lose? A lot of us do. It's believed that as many as two out of three adults in the United States is overweight or obese. The numbers are very similar in other countries.

This means you might have tried a few diets. Then you started exercising. Did you lose some weight? Many people lose a few pounds at the beginning of embracing smarter lifestyle choices that lead to weight loss.

Then they inevitably gain those pounds back, sometimes packing on a few more. What happened? Insanity struck.

They had changed their actions in the beginning. They were eating better and working out. The reward was the results they wanted. Then they slowly went back to an unhealthy diet and quit being physically active. The same thing is going to happen in that situation that happened every time they adopted those unhealthy habits in the past.

You can't go back in time. That's a shame, because you have so much to teach the younger version of yourself. All you can do now is remember this insanity definition for future decisions you make. You can't create a different reality without doing things differently. Embrace different behaviors if you want to create a new and different life.

Life can be difficult. Often times it's the tough lessons we learn that make us see the sunshine in our lives. Think about it. Would you really understand wonderfully rewarding events if that was all you ever experienced?

If from the day you were born you had nothing but magical moments, they wouldn't be magical. They would just be normal. You might not even be happy when these things happen because you just assume they're to be expected.

So the next time life gives you lemons, make a lemon meringue pie. Whip up some lemonade. Do something to turn that negative into a positive. It's a simple fact of the human condition that you are going to encounter negative situations in your life.

When things don't go as planned, you might not be able to control the outcome. What you can control every single time is how you respond to difficulties in life.

No One but You Gets to Decide Your Mental Outlook.

That's a pretty powerful statement, and it's true. You're the only person in the world who can control what you think. Sometimes you might have a thought pop into your head and wonder where it came from. That happens to all of us now and again.

This might lead you to believe that you don't control your own thoughts. Nothing could be further from the truth. As soon as some crazy thought gets your attention, change your mind. Think about something else. You can consciously choose your mental outlook if you don't automatically choose negative emotions when things don't go your way.

Be Careful with the Conversations You Have with Yourself.

Don't you wish you would have learned this when you were a much younger person? There's no telling how much success, fulfillment and peace of mind you missed out on over the years before you learned that you can choose your own outlook.

Until someone invents a time machine, you can't do anything about your past. What you can do is be careful about the way you talk to yourself. An overweight person might say, "My clothes never fit. I was just meant to be heavy."

That is a self-actualizing statement. You're telling your subconscious that there's no possibility of you losing excess weight. You are telling yourself that it's okay to be overweight or obese and there's nothing you can do about it.

Guess what happens? That's exactly what's going to become a reality in your life.

Young people need to be taught that they're going to experience a lack of control many times in their life. They should also realize that they can choose a positive or negative reaction to any event. Always deciding to look at life negatively means you're going to see more negativity. Choose to respond positively to negative situations and you'll feel better about your world and your life.