Polonius advising Laertes from Hamlet.
Prolific author and former Whitehouse speechwriter Daniel Pink, in his original and sagacious style, released a YouTube video called “40 Harsh Truths I Wish I Knew in my 20’s”, distilling 40 life lessons into a pithy 13 minute video. It’s worth a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w39A92UzTDY&t=43s
We’ve all learned important life lessons along the way. I’ve listed a few below that Pink either doesn’t mention or doesn’t convey in quite the same way.
(1) Practice self-forgiveness, self-compassion, and self-encouragement. Too many of us squander our finite mental energy on beating up on ourselves. Recognize your own tremendous worth.
(2) Don’t get so focused on career that you fail to build love, friendships, and family around you. Have children if you can, because nothing brings more reward and fulfillment to life as we grow older.
(3) Build a sustaining and resilient belief system to guide you through life; western philosophy is essential but for most of us a faith-based belief system is more robust in managing life’s more difficult passages.
(4) It’s been said many times, but: treat failures as a learning experience. It’s much better to have tried something and failed than never to have tried at all. As much as possible welcome failures for the life lessons in knowledge and wisdom they give us.
(5) Humor is serious business and as psychiatrist Viktor Frankl observed, a balm for the soul. Laughter, banter, silliness, are as essential to a good and happy life as anything else.
(6) Know your life’s purpose and priorities. Knowing your life purpose and priorities is a real stress reliever because it relieves us from stressing out about problems that don’t threaten our major goals, roles, and priorities.
(7) Say “Yes” to new experiences and projects even when you’re scared or nervous about the outcome. If you avoid new ventures out of anxiety, then you’ll never grow stronger and you’ll never live your life to the fullest.
(8) Get outside of yourself from time to time and give to others. You are responsible for you, for taking good care of yourself, for staying healthy, building a nest egg for your retirement, having friends and life experiences. But you’ll live a richer, more rewarding life if you’re not for yourself only. The more we give to others and help others along, the richer and happier life becomes.
(9) Get a dog. Or a cat. Or a bird. Experience the love, loyalty, companionship, and the sense of the Here-and-Now being wonderfully sufficient, that they bring to our lives.
(10) Never give up; this was Winston Churchill’s core belief and if it was good enough for him, it’s arguably good enough for the rest of us. Perseverance is a core resiliency strength.
What do you think of Daniel Pink’s “Harsh Truths I wish I knew in my 20’s”, or of those life lessons listed above? Which are most important, most relatable? What life lessons do you wish you’d known as your younger self? Let me know so we can increase our collective wisdom!
Larry H Pastor, MD
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