Lessons from 2018

The Mirror

“The Mirror” is a terminology that I recently learnt after finishing the last book that I read in 2018 (which I finished on the same 31st of December). I am talking about “The four agreements”. I will include it on my future list about more books to read. In summary, the whole books explain to you why you should NEVER take anything personally. Everything we do and we say it’s a reflection of ourselves. Furthermore, if someone is rude to you, or makes a nasty comment about your body, you shouldn’t take it as a personal attack, because the reason that individual behaved like that reside in them.

Of course, that also applies to positive comments. If someone makes you a positive comment, the reason for the comment is in them. The book makes a very explicit explanation and metaphor about how the people with more poison inside throws poison to you, and you take it personally, you drink it, that way the poison will live inside you.

Time Alone

Who has time for that? If you live with people, you probably have to see them every time you are at home. Then, when you go to work you will probably need to spend your working hours surrounded by people. Then, depending on the place you live, you will probably go home surrounded by more people.

Time alone is essential for your mental wellness and personal growth. It gives you the opportunity to think about yourself, what do you want to do, what do you think about a certain subject or how much to need a change in your life. Time alone has helped me a lot in the past to create the idea of what I want to achieve and the things that I love to do.

Try new things

To me, this applies to almost everything. Trying new foods made me understand myself even more. I know myself better after trying different things. For example, this year I discovered that currently, my favourite dish is Pho, even though my favourite type of food right now is actually Lebanese food. I also discovered that, even though I am in love with big cities, I also appreciate so much visiting quiet and small ones like Krakow and relaxing whilst discovering new cultures in not so touristic places, where everything is cheaper, the streets are not so crowded and you don’t need to make complicated algorithms in order to tour the whole city in 3/4 days. So… yeah, you can often discover a bunch of new things about yourself just by getting out of your comfort zone and trying new things!

Trying new things gives you the amazing feeling of growing and creating yourself.

It means you are not stuck all the time on the same life and hobbies. Finally, trying new things is often related to getting out of your comfort zone. You push yourself to do something to learn something you didn’t know about.

Value your time

I wish I had learned this before. Of course, I knew time was important, but I wasn’t sure what did I wanted to do with it. This means I would feel extremely unmotivated and frustrated.

It’s important to first decide what do you want to do with your life to start feeling the will to be productive and use every minute of your life wisely.

On some previous posts, I talked about how to organize yourself and be productive over the day. You are the only one that is in charge of your life and if you want to improve it and treat it like your best business, you will stop wasting those hours doing an unnecessary thing that just keeps you temporary entertained but doesn’t really contribute to your life at all.

Avoid unnecessary bad news

In my case, the thing that helped me to avoid this the most was to give up on watching TV, especially in the mornings, when our brain is more susceptible to absorb the negativity. Also, stop reading the news. I don’t need them to tell me how bad things happen every day. There is a point where I used to think that watching/reading the news was a part of being a productive and culturized person, as if I was going to become an absolute ignorant for not knowing how many murders happened last week, or which was the name of the last hurricane that took place in Indonesia, or about the last opinion that some politicians (most of the times I don’t even vote) gave on some speech.

I really used to think that not knowing this was a sign of lack of culture and immaturity. That was not true.

These type of news wouldn’t do a nice effect on mine. They would actually create more stress/frustration (because I can’t change them).

I feel that news is a very incorrect term for what we read in the newspaper. To me, sometimes I think they should be called “Bad News”, as most of the events we get from the TV are just a bunch of bad things happening in the world, and they are not even all of them, just a few of the bad ones (which sadly sell a lot more).

Something I dislike about the news is the little information they give you. Do we need to know about the stabbings from last week? Actually, it could be a bit useful if at the also gave us information about how to avoid being stabbed, the ways to avoid it or fight it back… Can you imagine that? A quick lesson on tv or the newspaper about self-defence techniques where we learn how to make the right moves in order to save our lives. No, the odds are that you will need to pay for self-defence classes if you want to learn about that.

In conclusion, decide which news and information are good for you and which one you prefer avoiding. For example, you may want to know if there are severe delays on the bus/train line that you are going to use. I decide which news will be useful to me and try to reach to them instead of digesting everything that the media shows me.

Be grateful and positive

This one is actually related to the previous one.

We live in a word where from the moment you wake up and turn on the tv, you are shot with a bunch of negative news about the world and everything terrible that is going on with it. News about murders, wars, poverty, natural disasters and hate. You might deal afterwards with coworkers/clients/family members that are also negative, frustrated, unhappy and even toxic.

It’s extremely hard to be positive and grateful about your life when everything that surrounds you seems to be collapsing and falling apart.

Try to be emotionally apart from that. You can see life in a very different way if you change your habits. Of course, the world will keep being a mess, but you can decide if you want to see your life as a mess or like an amazing opportunity to feel, enjoy and discover the world. Be careful with what you consume. Read books about self-improvement and positivity. Remember that whatever situation you are in right now, you can change it for the better.

Whatever you do, you can enjoy your life in your own way, and when you feel better about it, you will feel more empowered to pursue your dreams and work hard on your personal projects. 

Do you want to share any lessons from 2018?