10 Lessons Learned The Hard Way

The world makes us something that we are not. 

We live in a volatile and unpredictable world. Changes are happening faster and faster. Unpredictability and unknown causes stress which leads to all sort of disease. The science will tell you that human brain is not adapted for the modern society we live in. Politics and economics will tell you differently.

There is too much noise out there. It’s all around us. Gets harder and harder to avoid all the noise and nonsense we get every day.

I have been trying myself to simplify my life. I have been trying to stop loving things more than people, life and nature. I want to live a life which allows me to be present. This force me to change my lifestyle little by little and do things differently.

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At the end of the day it’s all good mental training.. and the timing is profoundly perfect. Here is what I’ve learned.

1. Make yourself uncomfortable

Here is my statement. It’s not about how many things we can do but rather how comfortable we choose to be. You can’t say I can’t if you didn’t even try. Life is about the choices we make and the best thing is that we have options. If not, we can create them. I think we are what we choose to be.

If it’s necessarily, force yourself to get uncomfortable. Figure out what your baseline is and what your comfort level is and just turning it upside-down. To do it again and again, till uncomfortable gets comfortable.

2. Deal with uncertainty

When you grow up you learn important things in the hard way. Nothing is eternal. Everything is constantly changing and evolving. The same applies with love!

We, humans, have the illusion of control. We like to believe that we’re in control of our lives, of our mind, of what we love, of what we feel, our job, relationships, everything.

Future is uncertain. And predictability is hard to make due to unseen elements and decision making under opacity. So, don’t expect stability and structure. You need to create it by yourself.

3. Build discipline

I personally don’t think that something major can happen out of randomness and chaos. I believe in perseverance and timing. That moment when we find the pieces we need in order to build further.

We need balance in life. Otherwise we get distracted and loose focus. If you loose comfort when changing habits, keep going. Means that you make progress.

4. Nurture relationships

Stay in the fucking right crowd and hang out with the right people. Eventually you will become the sum of values, habits, behaviour, beliefs, etc. of the people who surround you.

Love your friends and family more than love your work. When you get old, sick or in trouble, is most likely that those you love and take care of, will support and be there for you.

5. Make sport

Let’s make it clear. Doing physical exercise, sweating, getting tired and feeling pain it’s not comfortable. I think that making sports is a great way to get un-comfortable. If you do it regularly, you build discipline and can train your body more efficient. It will eventually turn it into a habit and your hard work will pay off.

I think that endurance is one of the best mental training. You can’t train your body without training your mind. It’s like training just half of who you are and that’s not the way you go.

Physical activity reduce risk of hypertension, cardiovascular diseases (CHD), type 2 diabetes mellitus, stroke, breast and colon cancer and depression.

Neurogenesis studies shows that running helps growing new brain cells in the hippocampus, the area responsible for learning, memory, mood and emotion.

Physical effort and exercise is good for emotional regulation and fighting depression. It’s also fundamental to energy balance and weight control, together with an adequate diet.

6. Connect with nature

I think that respecting nature should be a habit, something normal in every society, not something debatable. Nature don’t own us anything. We all own our entire existence to the nature.

So, let’s learn to give more and stop pretending we deserve everything we destroy. If you cut a tree, plant a forest. When camping don’t leave garbage behind. When doing shopping, avoid plastic and recicle more.

Think at the future of your children. And choose sustainability. The children of your children also have the right to live a breathable life.

7. Don’t lose focus

There is one excuse that we all use – “I don’t have time.” We all have the same time on Earth in a day – 24 hours. It depends on each of us how we spend it. Sometimes we can’t get things done or be efficient because we loose focus.

Sometimes we’re not happy about the progress we make because we let ourselves distracted too much. I think it’s essential to have the ability to focus on the right thing, to look for meaningful stuff rather than being efficient doing the wrong thing.

8. Embrace emotions

We are all emotional beings don’t matter how hard is to accept it. We can get out of the control in a short amount of time if stay in the wrong environment.

It’s hard for us all to deal with other people emotions and behaviour. But could be terrifying, frightening, to stop for a little and see who we are. Some people avoid silence. We see it unusual to stay in silence.

Silence allows us to listen what the mind have to say and how much our soul struggles. Living in the now is hard. We feel bad about the past and anxious about the future. We fear to love because we are afraid of suffering.

We all go through physical suffering and emotional pain with a reason. Life is a gift, even when suffering is our teacher. And most important, repair not replace.

9. Develop awareness

“The point is that you cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” Become aware and stay aware of who you are. Make the difference between what you know, what you don’t know and what you can learn fast.

First tell yourself what you want to be, then do what you have to do. The biggest challenge in life is to deal with who you are and evolve as a person. Don’t let yourself define by others.

“Know yourself and will win all battles.” beautifully once said Sun Tzu, one of the greatest military strategist of all time.

10. Value time and energy

Here is the hard truth about life – one day, it will end. Sooner or later, we’ll fucking die. We are not eternal or immortal.

I’ve learned that time is our most valuable asset in life, our most valuable resource. And why is it so important? It’s simple. Because no one will never ever give wasted time back, so better learn how to use it.

The same rule applies with energy. Better make sure that at the end of the day, there is some energy left to do what makes you happy, to spend more time with family and friends and to do good in the world.