18 Life-Changing Lessons I Learnt In 2017
Just 3 more days to go in 2017. And then another journey of 365 days.
This made me think back on the last 361 days of my life– like, really think back. And the conclusion is that 2017 has been an amazing year.
This past year, I’ve done things I’d never tried before–both good and bad. I’ve pushed myself past the limits I’d been too lazy to push past before. I’ve arguably learnt far more in the past 360 days as regards my personal development than I’ve learnt in the past 22 years of my life.
Yes. I know how that sounds. But really, 2017 has been a great year. The best part is that it didn’t take me the whole 361 days to learn the most crucial lessons I learnt. In fact, most of the progress I made happened within the last 100 days. Which means the lessons are not necessarily difficult to come by or to learn, but more about availability and willingness to learn.
Below is a summary of the most important lessons I’ve learnt this year that you can also pick one or two from.
1. I Am A Product of My Choices.
I came across some brilliant writers this year, whose writings have helped move me from who I used to be towards who I can be, towards attaining my full potential. One of such writers is Zat Rana. In one of his posts, he stated how important one’s choices are in moulding their life. But also how not making a choice is also a form of making a choice. Ignoring to make a choice that transforms your life is a choice to remain the way you are. There is no way you are not making a choice. Not moving when you should move is a choice.
The little choices I make consciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly, they all add up, and today I am a product of those choices.
No one stumbles upon a better life. I am my choices.
“You get to decide. You must decide–because if you don’t, someone else will. Indecision is a bad decision.” — Benjamin P. Hardy.
2. Principles Control Your Life.
Benjamin P. Hardy explained how we don’t control the outcomes of our lives in one of his posts. Yes, I control my actions. I control the choices I make. But in the end, it’s the principles behind those actions that shape how my life will turn out.
If I write for an hour everyday, at the end of a month, I’ll be a better writer than I was 30 days ago. If I take twenty minutes to work on something everyday, at the end of a month, I’d have made progress.
It’s the compound effect at work. Everything abides by principles. My actions are governed by principles.
“Every area of your life affects every other area of your life. When you begin making improvements in one area, all other areas will be affected,” says Benjamin P. Hardy.
3. My Time is My Most Precious Asset.
Time is the raw material of productivity.
This is probably the most important lesson I’ve learnt this year, even though I’ve ‘known’ it for a long time. I still paid attention and gave my time to things and people that are not adding value to my life. Time that, once lost is lost forever.
Seneca said it all when he said, “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested… So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”
We have a lot of time to live, all things being equal. But as Ryan Holiday said in the Daily Stoic, if you take the number of years you’ve lived and and multiply it by 365 and then by 24, you’ll get the number of hours you’ve lived. Now, of all those hours lived, how much of it have I spent doing things that really matter? How much of it have I wasted?
“It is then not that we have a short time to live but that we waste most of it.”
What I give my time to matters. What I do every minute of the day is important. Things I give my time to determines the quality of my life.
“I say, let no one rob me of a single day who isn’t going to make a full return on the loss.”–Seneca.
4. Mornings Are The Most Important Part of The Day.
Mel Robbins, in her interview on Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu talked about how important mornings are. Her reference to the Game Theory and how the apps on phones are designed to give random rewards with each notification one opens by releasing dopamine in the brain made me rethink using my phone first thing in the morning. Because, then I’m starting my day in a reactive mode, and that sets the tone for the rest of the day.
My morning routine is important. The things I do first in the morning determine how the rest of my day will be.
If you lose control of your mornings, you’ll spend the rest of the day trying to gain it back.
“Morning is an important time of day, because how you spend your morning can often tell you what kind of day you are going to have,” –Lemony Snicket
5. Keep A Journal.
The first time I read about journaling, I didn’t pay much attention to it because I felt the whole idea of keeping a journal was weird. But after coming across it in a number of posts from writers I admire, I finally decided to find out more about it. After much deliberation, I started journaling. Benjamin P Hardy’s Why Keeping a Daily Journal Could Change Your Life helped shed more light on the importance of journaling.
Today is my forty-second day of keeping a journal, and I can’t begin to list how much it has helped improve my life. The act helps me take a critical look at my day, how I’ve spent the past one, how I can improve the new day.
Let me also mention that Stoic leader Seneca and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius kept journals. In recent times, people like Tim Ferriss and Ryan Holiday among others are known to keep journals and are also stoics.
Which leads to…
6. I Need Stoicism.
The mention of the word ‘stoic’ used to invoke an image of someone who is basically a statue–unreactive, unemotional. It made me think of a person who doesn’t care about anyone else and isn’t concerned by whatever happened. But most importantly, someone who isn’t fun to be with. But thanks to Ryan Holiday and Tim Ferriss, who helped to properly define who a Stoic is, I discovered that learning stoicism is important, and now it is one of the best things that happened to me this past year. The Taos is Seneca by Tim Ferriss, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday are wonderful books that have helped me on that journey.
Stoicism helps me keep track of my life and focus on the important things.
“If someone succeeds in provoking you, realise that your mind is complicit in the provocation.”–Epictetus
7. Meditation Helps.
I grew up in a very religious environment–a christian home to be precise, and the thought of meditation is closely related to paganism and idolatry in my mind. I believed it was a way to open yourself up to evil spirits, so I wasn’t very open to it when I began my journey of self discovery and personal development.
But then I came across mindfulness and decided to find out for myself what the whole process of meditation was about.
Turned out I’d held a very wrong notion for a very long time.
Meditation has helped me to improve focus on the only time that really matters–now. It has helped me take control of the only thing I can control–myself, my thoughts, my actions… And as far as I know, no evil spirit has come into me.
“Meditation is not evasion; it is a serene encounter with reality.” — Thic Nhat Hanh.
8. My Opinion Could Be Wrong.
Growing up in a very religious environment ingrained into my mind the idea that certain things are not meant to be questioned. This is how it is, don’t bother to think about it or unravel it. This started affecting other areas of my life. I stopped thinking for myself and questioning things, right or wrong. So whatever I am told, I take it as the only truth and defend it blindly.
And that’s just the meaning of a fixed mindset. It sets up one’s mind in a way that they are not open to critically evaluating certain beliefs they hold.
A growth mindset on the other hand allows one to admit that an opinion about a particular thing could be wrong and that drives them to ask questions, seek for answers, and more importantly, be willing to learn from the answers they get.
According to Daniel Kahneman in Thinking: Fast and Slow, “The decision to invest additional resources in a losing account, when better investments are available, is known as the sunk-cost fallacy.”
So it is not just enough to know that my opinion could be wrong, I must be willing to drop it and pick up a better one after critically examining it.
In Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind, I discovered that most of my opinion about how the world is were flawed, and even though it took a lot of ‘battle’ in my mind for me to realign myself with reality, I was able to.
“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” — Socrates.
9. “Take Care of Your Body.”
Eating healthy foods and exercising are very important to keep a healthy body. I’ve known this since primary school.
But it was just head knowledge. I’ve always wanted to start exercising. But I always plan to start ‘next week’ or when ‘I am in a better environment’. Next week never arrived.
Until I woke up one morning and said, ‘fuck it, I’m going for a run today.’ and I got up and actually went out. And the next day, I went out again, and pushed myself beyond the distance I went the day before and then the day after that.
Then it became a habit and I picked out two days of the week I was comfortable with and left the rest of the week to working out at home. Then I started looking forward to my morning exercise, which leads back to how important the mornings are. Now I’m happily looking forward to living forever(haha).
“The positive impact you can make while you are sick in bed is exactly zero,” says Todd Brison.
“Take care of your body. It is the only place you have to live.”. –Jim Rohn
10. I Am Reflection Of Those Closest To Me.
Jim Rohn said, “you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
Friends are important assets to have. But who are my friends? It’s not really about how many friends I have but the quality of my friendships.
The friends I keep now are people who push me to be better, who are themselves willing to be better. I learnt that I shouldn’t be afraid to let go of people who are not adding value to me even if we’ve been friends my whole life.
The company I keep says a lot about who I am. Dan Sullivan said, “Surround yourself more with people who remind you of your future than your past.”
“At the end of the day, the bonds we forge with those close to us directly shape the quality of our lives. We are, and we live through, the people we spend time with.” — Zat Rana.
11. The Process is Art.
Whatever I do, I shouldn’t ignore the process.
It’s like climbing a mountain, you spend most of the time climbing but only a little time at the top of the mountain.
Enjoy the climb. Enjoy the process. Because most of what you’ll learn is in the process–endurance, perseverance, consistency.
Don’t skip any step.
Enjoy the process. “The process is art,” says James Altucher.
“Make it about the work and the principles behind it–not about a glorious vision.”–Ryan Holiday.
12. Stop Chasing After Happiness.
Happiness is not waiting at the end of the process. It is the byproduct of the process. Happiness is in the process.
Don’t ignore the process.
Chasing after happiness like it’s at the end the work, is like chasing a mirage. As you approach it, you get disappointed because it was not there all along.
“The pursuit of happiness is actually the cause of much of our misery.”–Zat Rana.
13. Your Experiences Have Value.
Yes, learn from the experiences of others, but don’t be cajoled by that to live within your comfort zone. Go out, experiment. Find out for yourself. You’ll learn better and remember easily when you experience things first-hand. I really needed to learn that. I had been living in the confines of my comfort zone for too long. I was very risk averse and it limited me in so many ways.
“People don’t learn in the abstract. They learn through doing,” says Benjamin P. Hardy.
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing”–George Bernard Shaw.
14. Action, Not Words.
“If you think you want to do it, do it,” says Ryan Holiday. Don’t just think about it, don’t just say you want to do it. Get up and do it.
It starts with the thought, but the action is what moves me towards realisation.
“No one will give you permission other than yourself.” — Tony Fahkry.
15. Read Books.
It is no coincidence that leaders are readers. The information found in books will make one live multiple lives in one lifetime. I learnt that I could learn from people who have lived centuries before lessons that are still essential today. What has happened before will happen again in certain domains. The art of living found in Seneca’s letters are still very much relevant today.
Even in this age, people have gone through what I’m going through now and they have shared thier lessons in books. Which is why on my list of books to read in 2018, there is Ray Dalio’s Principles.
“Reading is telepathy. A book is the most powerful technology invented.”–Zat Rana.
16. Watch Your Words.
I’ve never been one to talk too much. But that’s not all. It’s not just about talking too much, it’s also about what I say when I talk.
James Altucher said, “when you gossip, you increase the supply of your words and reduce the demand for them.”
“Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent.”–Dionysius of Halicarnassus.
17. Don’t Focus Too Much on Perfection.
I write and re-read. Then I discover how very imperfect it is and how far from perfection I am, so I disheartened and stop writing, I stop reading. I stop working on myself. I stop trying altogether.
Then I read one of Thomas Oppong’s post, where he said, “stop aiming for perfection and show your work.”
So I stopped obsessing over perfection, and started acting more. And I realised that I can only get better when I act.
Zat Rana said, “Everything is approximate. Don’t aim to be right. Aim to be less wrong.”
Create first, then focus on improving.
“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”–Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
18. Be Grateful.
The act of gratefulness makes one think deeply about their life and find real reasons to be grateful. I discovered that the world is not as bad as it seems when I started taking notes and finding reasons to be grateful. It tired out there was so much to be grateful for. It helped me focus on the positive things in my life and also see the good in my experiences, because my experiences have value.
Tony Robbins said, “Trade your expectation for appreciation and the world changes instantly.”
“Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” says Melody Beattie.
“Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.”–Brian Tracy.
I’ve learnt a lot of important life lessons this year that have helped improved the quality of my days, and consequently my life.
Ultimately, I’ve learnt that nothing beats improving myself–body and mind.
“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”–Mae West.
