20 BRILLIANT LIFE LESSONS FROM me!

I loved Anthony Bourdain's "23 brilliant life lessons" published the other day. Apparently that is a thing! So for fun, these are mine!

1- Whatever your mother says is true. Trust her and swallow all her words. It will take 40 years to realize this, so just take my word for it.

2- Learn at least one other language. It is one of the best things you can do to yourself.

3- If you are a woman, think hard in your late 20s and early 30s whether you want to have a child or not. If you do, no matter how fit, cool, young, or unprepared you are, make that a priority. There is a terrible myth going around that having children past 40 is a piece of cake. Do not buy that. This trend will be reversed in the next 10 years so get ahead of it.

4- Your friends are the best assets you will ever acquire.

5-  Live within your means.

6- Everyone is really beautiful naked. Once naked it does not matter if you are short, tall, fat, thin, have big breasts or have a mark on your penis. It all really is beautiful.

7- Your 20s and 30s are spent searching for meaning, yourself, planning your life, building your career. Once you are past that you not only still have to search for all that but you have to learn how to deal with loss, wounds, baggages, and more! So try to have fun a little too as it never ends.

8- There is no up without a down, and there is no down without an up.

This also means that Change is Constant. What is not changing is you core. Find it and remember to always come back to it to anchor when you go through change.

9- Laugh really hard and let go for real at least once a week. If not, once a month. The more the better.

10- Meditate. The vibrations of your heart and breath and the more than 60% of the water inside you take you to oceans and help you tune out the bad stuff and tune in to yourself. At least until the next round of meditation.

Another way of achieving this is connecting with at least one of the 4 elements every day:  //Water: If you don't live by a lake or the sea, then take a bath. //Fire: Soak in the sun. //Wind: bike or run. //Earth: Sit on the ground, walk bare foot, plant or look at trees.
In all of these focus on your breath.

Take this exercise of TUNING IN as seriously as brushing your teeth or eating. It is as important.

11- Have a hobby. Please.

12- If you are anti the marriage institutions for the obvious reasons of church or state, you will learn that there is actually solid good reasons behind all the binding and vows and rituals. Think of it as a code of conduct, an oath one takes to always comes back to and remember why he/she is in it to begin with. Construct your own code and adhere to it. There are still no guarantees either way.

13- Never tell anyone to "move on" or to "get over it." Never.

14- Always think about whether you are doing something out of love or out of fear or weakness. It is hard but try to understand it. It will help you cut out extra obligations, inauthentic behavior, and weed out unnecessary money or time expending. In other words, always ask the "why" and do the pros and cons and see if you should do what you are doing.

15- Have a role model, even if imaginary.

16- Life is not fair and is hard and it hurts. Kind of like eating an ice cream with hidden thorns!  But it is all you and me and everyone else gets. Everybody also goes through all you are going through and more.

17- Sit on the floor, bare foot, at least once a day. It grounds you and is good stretching. This becomes especially helpful if you don't have

18- Deal with people as if you were going to die tomorrow. Would you have any regrets not having said something to them, or done something with them?

19- There must be an after life. Of course in form of energy and not heaven/hell.

20- Eat a lot of vegetables.

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I tagged my friends who have turned 40 and asked them to share their 20 Brilliant Life Lessons! here they come and they are wonderful. Enjoy!

RH's List:

1. Do epic shit…continuously (at least once a week) (…and try not to share) - it helps keep your mind and body in sync and creates a discipline in you. Furthermore, it helps continuously digest new experiences.

2. spend at least 1 to 2 nights outside per month, every month - waaaaay too many positives.

3. Eat healthy - exactly that! avoid crap. the body is a machine. Give it good fuels.

4. Leave every conversation with a smile - Personally i like to remember others smiling….if you think about it, you do as well :0)

5. Mix work and play - You spend more time with folks you work with than your own family! it is a fact. Make it fun. They are also in the same boat. 

6. Make decisions - good or bad, as long as 51% are good, things will move forward.

7. Make new friends - there are 7 billion people on this planet…..

8. Make every breath count.

9. Listen ….. more than you speak (something i personally need to work on).

10. Drink good spirits - life’s waaaaay too short to drink cheap whiskey!

11. Create - exactly that: create.

12. Walk.

13. Love honestly - it took me a while to learn this as a "life lesson" but it is true. Another interpretation could be: don't engage unless your heart is in it....and if you do engage in something then give it all.

14. Don’t trust anyone that says they don’t care about money.

15. If stuck on a problem, walk away….then come back to it after some time passes - it works!!!!

16. Do math (daily) - not like sit there and do chaos theory applicable! something to keep the mind sharp.

17. Keep it simple - This is one rule to live by.

18. Don’t drive fast - pretty obvious.

19. Listen to lots of music.

20. Read a book - and if you don’t have the time, then make the time. If you still can’t do that, then 

do books on tape!

21. Don't do crazy shit!

22. Read Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance at least once!!!

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NM's List:

1. Don't waste your time shopping. don't waste your time shopping for cheap stuff especially. if you must, get the real goods - and only a few of them. but know that they're not always the most expensive.

2. Check your thyroid - and take your thyroid medications on the dot and as prescribed if you need to.

3. Appreciate your mom.

4. Don't "default" to how your parents lived, talked and behaved. be active in living your own personal version of life.

5. Hug and kiss your children a lot.. smile at them a lot - even if you're not a smiley person.

6. If you make a mistake, yell at, or do anything that you regret towards your children - let them know that you regret it and that you're sorry about it and do your best not to repeat. it's the best lesson for them and keeps you in check too.

7. Sometimes you need to put yourself on auto-pilot and just do it.

8. Never underestimate the power of "going out of your way".. when you care about someone or something - that's how you show it.. If it were convenient, then it wouldn't mean as much.

9. Having a point of view on religion, god, the "higher being", spirituality, etc. anchors a person. Don't pull it out of no-where.. read, talk and learn about it. 

10. When you let money take center stage in life, it will wipe out a lot of good feelings, a lot of things you loved or liked about yourself and others. don't let it happen.

11. Follow the world news. I don't have to count the reasons why - but the least of it, is that it will make you less self-centered.

12. You will never ever know what others feel unless you've had very similar experiences. you will never know what it feels to lose a parent, unless you've lost one. you'll never know what it feels to be beaten by the police, unless you've been crushed by one.. so there's no point trying to get it. All you can do is to be there for them.

13. Weave together your own mis-matched and colorful tapestry of friends and acquaintances.. they will stretch you and expose you to so many different worlds and feelings. don't surround yourself with like-minded people.

14. By far the most memorable experiences of my career, are those where I coached and mentored others.. and I could always do more.. everything else pales.

15. Be conscious about cutting sugar out of your food. It will do wonders.

16. Read and re-read the classics.. wisdom of the ages.

17. If you open yourself up to loving and understanding nature, you've just given yourself a precious gift and outlet for peace.

18. Every person yearns respect. it will do wonders to give an ounce.

19. The best form of love is the kind that comes after while. it comes from familiarity, appreciation for the soul of the other. it's the kind that makes your heart ache for the other. but you gotta give it time.

20. You will drive yourself nuts if you try to optimize every single action of the day - just pick a few big ones.

21. Every morning - write on a standard post-it note, the list of things you have to accomplish that day and only do those that fit on a single note paper. start the next day with a new post-it.

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AM's List:

1-     Don’t ever miss an opportunity to have a good laugh… and a good sob!

2-     You don’t have to please everyone; also do not need to piss anyone off, unless it is absolutely necessary.

3-      Love is like a delicate flower. It needs constant attention. Leave it alone and it will die off. Attend it and it will grow and become stronger and more beautiful.

4-     Take time and go through your mistakes and errors every now and then. Find a way to avoid them in the future and more importantly forgive yourself for doing them and move on.

5-     Spend time with people younger than 6 and older than 70. There is a lot to learn from both groups.

6-     You don’t have to always substantiate your point. See if it is worth your while to make someone else look like an idiot. If not, let them be.

7-     Always remember, it sounds impossible until it is done.

8-     Do not trust people who say they do not like kids. It is very fine if someone says they do not like to HAVE kids, but if they say they do not LIKE children, in general, they’re weird.

9-     When you are doing something and a voice in your head says: “oh, oh, this is not going to end well…” stop doing it as soon as possible, because most probably it will not end well.

10-  You sometimes have to do some things that you do not like, to make someone that you love happy. Since you are doing it anyway, do it with love and try to enjoy doing it.

11-  (Someone said, love it, change it or leave it)… If you don’t love it, try to change it first before giving up.

12-  If you want to know your true self, observe yourself when you are playing

13-  Avoid annoying people and situations at all costs. They will just grind your soul without any rewards.

14-  If someone doesn’t like your sarcasm, make sure you ask them how you can completely change yourself to please them… (mwahahahaha)

15-  Always go back to the big picture and adjust its size accordingly, preferably make it bigger.  

16-  Do apologize for what you said when you were hungry.

17-  Shop online. It saves time and fuel and the anticipation, while waiting for your newly purchased merchandize, makes it sweeter.

18-  Cook and enjoy cooking.

19-  Don’t ever try to make your kid(s) what you wanted to be. They belong to their own future not to your past.

20-  Watch sad movies and listen to sad songs and cry. It is an unbelievably sole-polishing practice.  

21-  Workout hard. If it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t count. BUT don’t ignore your injuries… especially now that you are over 40!

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