I’d spent the last 15 years planning what I wanted my life to be like and writing bucket lists of all the things I wanted to achieve one day then I realised that had actually been my life and I needed to start living my dreams not just thinking about them. My search for happiness took me around the world only to arrive back where I started to find it had been with me all along.After 15 years as a Human Resources professional climbing the corporate ladder I had enough, I felt empty and anything but the ‘success’ my life looked like from the outside. This lead to a change for me, I took 12 months out to write a book, travel the world, volunteer and became a yoga teacher. I learned more about life during this time that any number of years at school or hours in leadership courses has taught me, here are 50 lessons I have learned from living life;
- Before you love anyone else, first you must love yourself
- Nothing is out of your reach, unless you put it there
- Know which direction you want to go before you set off
- Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food (Socrates)
- If you let go of excess baggage that you no longer need you’ll make room for what you really want
- You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep rereading the last one
- It’s not what you’re walking away from, it’s what you’re walking towards
- Stretch yourself and grow, learn new things
- Balance is not something you find, it’s something you create
- Laugh everyday, even at yourself
- You are not defined by your bank account, street address, job title
- You make a living by what you get but you make a life by what you give
- You don’t always have to have all of the answers
- You do not need to have valuable stuff to feel valued
- Don’t try so hard to fit in if you were born to stand out
- You define your own success
- The time is now be in the present moment
- Sometimes you have to disconnect to reconnect
- By slowing down you’ll find you have more time
- The quieter you become the more you can hear
- You can’t always control what happens to you but you can control how you react to it
- Instead of wondering when our next vacation is we should set up a life we don’t need to escape from (Seth Goldin)
- You can’t learn to surf without getting wet (John Kabat Zinn)
- Live simply so that others can simply live
- There’s always enough time if you spend it doing the things that matter
- Don’t be so busy making a living that you forget to make a life
- We are what we think, our thoughts make our world
- There are no mistakes only lessons
- Happiness isn’t about getting what you want it’s about loving what you have
- I can be wealthy even when my purse is empty
- Don’t chase your dreams, live them
- Don’t change so people will like you, be yourself so the right people will love you
- Everyone is fighting their own battles, always be kind
- Insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results (Einstein)
- We should measure in value not in price
- You can do anything you want but you can’t do everything you want
- Do what you love and love what you do and you will be successful
- That man is poor, not who has little but who hankers after more (Seneca)
- You can’t change anyone but yourself
- Not all those who wander are lost
- You don’t have to see the whole staircase to take the first step
- Security is not having things it’s handling things
- It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult (Seneca)
- A journey of a thousand mile begins with a single step (Lao Tzu)
- Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action. (Benjamin Disraeli)
- Everyone who got where they are started from where they were.
- Live as though you’ll die tomorrow, but dream as though you’ll live forever
- Some pursue happiness, others create it
- Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. (Robert Brault)
- The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be, (Ralph Waldo Emerson)