44 PIECES OF ADVICE I WISH I KNEW 10 YEARS AGO

Here are 44 things that if I could go back in time, I would tell my younger self. They might just provoke your thinking.

1. Confidence comes after, not before. What you need is courage, not confidence.

2. Don’t waste your time and energy trying to solve imaginary problems that don’t exist. (This means your remembered past problems, and your future imagined ones).

3. Your fears make you foolish.

4. Most people do too much. Slow down. Paradoxically, often slowing down results in higher productivity and performance.

5. Your body doesn’t know the difference between reality, and thought.

6. Don’t take your thoughts so seriously. They are just words.

7. Energy flows where attention goes. Where we focus, we feel. We can create different ‘realities’ for ourselves based on our mindset and where we place our attention.

8. Don’t neglect what really matters in life.

9. You will continually forget what really matters in life. Remind yourself.

10. Trust yourself.

11. Beliefs are fickle – because they are made up of just words.

12. Sometimes we tell ourselves something so often it feels like truth to us.

13. We feel like our emotions are linked to external events, or other people. But they come from our own thoughts.

14. Hard work isn’t the path to wellbeing.

15. People’s words can only hurt you if you already believe them. We can only ever feel our own thinking.

16. If you are having any negative thoughts about the World or anyone else, you are hurting yourself.

17. Look where you want to go, not where you don’t want to go. Why? Because if you look where you don’t want to go, you go there. Like riding a bike.

18. It’s not what’s wrong with you, it’s what happened to you.

19. This is it, here, now. This right here is reality. To argue with it, or distort it, creates conflict, suffering and struggle.

20. If we are talking about a past or future scenario then we are thinking about thinking. And that’s at least 2 steps removed from reality.

21. When we are triggered, we are not seeing ourselves, others, or the World clearly. And that is all we need to know in the moment. Our positive state of mind will come back to us naturally if we just let it.

22. If you don’t choose your thoughts, your mind will choose them for you.

23. Life is what we make of it.

24. Don’t give time and energy to things that aren’t important.

25. We think we see life as it is. This is not true. We see life as we are. Every thought you have is about you.

26. You don’t have a problem – you just think you have.

27. You can’t hold yourself responsible for what you did in the past. You’re not that person anymore. You’ve changed mentally, emotionally and physically.

28. You can’t hold yourself responsible for anything in the future either – it hasn’t happened yet!

29. Life can be hard. It’s ok to find it hard sometimes. It doesn’t mean you are doing something wrong. Afterall, it was the Buddha’s first truth he discovered.

30. Letting go makes space for something new. Let go.

31. Let go again.

32. People change by becoming more themselves, and less their conditioning.

33. Don’t try to be someone else. Instead consider getting in touch with the most authentic parts of yourself.

34. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

35. Most of it is small stuff.

36. Listen to what your body and emotions are telling you. The messages they send you in the form of symptoms or pain, are worth listening to.

37. Everything you are looking for is available to you right now, in this very moment. You are already ‘there’.

38. Seeing things you dislike in others, probably means that it is within you.

39. A surprisingly many people are working hard to get to a future where they can finally relax and be happy, yet sacrificing their present moment happiness and wellbeing in pursuit of that goal.

40. It’s always much easier to just deal with the present moment, rather than the imagined future.

41. Be careful who you tell your dreams to.

42. If you are going to pursue your dreams, you can expect anxiety and self-doubt to come along for the ride. You don’t have to listen to them.

43. At our essence, we are just pure being.

44. The Beatles were right – Love is all you need.