After 30 full years on this planet (yesterday was my 31st birthday), here are the most important lessons I’ve learned:
Take the small signs seriously.
Always leave room for unexpected challenges (energetically).
Work to live instead of live to work (relationships are meant to come first). Do you not care about relationships? Do you not care about health? Then please, by all means, go all out in your career. This is a deep and fundamental flaw in society; our society condones external validation (status, money, power, etc.). In our society, we want it all before a certain age, but it’s not meant to all come at once.
Prioritize the right things in your life.
Deal with the past so it doesn’t follow you around anymore (emphasis with the “deal with” part; dealing with it is not trying to suppress it and put it in a box. Deal with it by actually, in reality, facing it). What are the patterns you’ve inherited from others? How can you break free? I recently finished reading the bestseller “The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma” and the author says the way you move beyond your past is by facing it, diving into it, sharing it, and getting closer to it.
Set your own standards in life, and do things in your own time and on your own terms. if you don’t do what’s good for you, you fail yourself.
Favor substance over status. Don’t have your self-esteem based on external status and external validation. Easier said than done, but possible with inner work and practice.
If you do everything that everyone else wants, there’s always one person who’s unhappy: you. As for me, I’m done with pleasing others.
Jeff Davis is an award-winning author, most recently publishing The Power of Authentic Leadership: Activating the 13 Keys to Achieving Prosperity Through Authenticity.
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