A successful life is about coping with lessons that life teaches us

20 essential life lessons you must learn to succeed
Photo by Eneko Uruñuela on Unsplash
“I believe that there’s a lesson in almost everything that you do and every experience, and getting the lesson is how you move forward.” — Oprah Winfrey, an American talk show host, TV producer, actress, author, and philanthropist

Life lessons are powerful. They provide you with insights, wisdom, and knowledge.

How you approach your life tells others a lot about who you are and what you do.

Life lessons can help you improve yourself. They can help you grow your relationships. Most importantly, they can help you provide the proper perspective on your life.

The bottom line is that life is about coping with life lessons and what they teach you.

Here are 25 essential life lessons you must learn to succeed in life.

Read also: 10 tiny habbits that help you sleep like a baby

1. Be Grateful

Gratitude is a positive emotion that involves being thankful and appreciative. A trustworthy source of power lies in being grateful. When you practice thoughts of appreciation, you’ll find strength and power.

Show daily appreciation for your family, friends, and colleagues. When you experience gratitude, you feel grateful for the people in your life. You’ll respond with more kindness, warmth, and generosity. When you are thankful, you are more likely to be happy.

2. Failure is a Blessing

We often try hard to avoid failure, but it’s a sign that we have enough courage to try something. Failure is a blessing in disguise and helps you live in the moment. You act when you fail.

Accept that failure is part of the experience. Learn from failure and grow from it. Failure helps you stay focused on your journey and opens yourself up to something better in the future. Failure boosts your knowledge and shows what you can control and what you can’t.

3. Be Prepared

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” — Benjamin Franklin, founding father of the United States

If you don’t prepare, you are setting yourself up for failure. Preparation is a vital part of success. You are more successful when you are more prepared.

Success is where preparation and opportunity meet. Don’t take success away from you by forgetting to prepare. Preparation builds your confidence.

4. Be Optimistic

Your thoughts are more powerful than you may realize. Since they impact your life, make sure they are positive. To be successful, you must think of abundance and success.

Thoughts can become our reality so it’s essential you are optimistic.

You create your reality from your thoughts, so what you think, you’ll attract into your life. Every day, we have random ideas floating in our heads, many of them being negative and limiting.

5. A Good Reputation is Valuable

A reputation is your social standing in society and a measure of your influence. It is built on years of the actions you take and the words you speak. A good reputation can be more valuable than money.

Your reputation determines future opportunities because your reputation precedes you before you enter a room.

When you have a good reputation, you provide more value, and people are more loyal to you. A good reputation will likely lead to a better job and allow you to become a leader.

6. Don’t Stop Learning

Your education doesn’t stop until you die. There is so much to learn during our lives, so we must take advantage of learning something new every day. Learning keeps your mind sharp.

Research has found that learning a new skill strengthens your brain. When you know something new, you exercise your brain and help you better focus. Challenge yourself to learn a new skill, read a book, take an online course, learn a new language, or earn a certification.

7. Give More

You get more when you give more. Success is not about how much you get but how much you give. Seek to improve the lives of others.

Generosity makes you happier and healthier.

When you are generous, you are often more successful in your personal and professional life. Generosity reduces stress, enhances your life’s purpose, and can increase your lifespan. When you give to others, you improve the quality of your life.

8. Be Humble

Most of us underrate the power of humility. When you are humble, you stay teachable and coachable. Regardless of how much you know, you must realize there is always more to learn.

Humble people are well-liked and respected. It helps you listen to others, discover different points of view, and show others that you don’t have all the answers. Humility is a strength, not a weakness, and it helps you stay grounded in your values and modest in your achievements.

9. Simplify

Things gather dust, and the more stuff you have, the more time you must clean, maintain, and store it. The fewer things you have in life, the freer you are. Declutter and simplify your life.

Simplify your life by simplifying your commitments, consumption, expectations, habits, and mindset. Focus on what really matters to you and enjoy the ordinary things in life to their fullest. You’ll produce better results with a less complicated, stressful, and overwhelming schedule.

10. Be Vulnerable

Vulnerability is about being open to uncertainty, new experiences, and the willingness to love and be loved. The more vulnerable you are, the more powerful you become.

Vulnerability doesn’t make you weaker; it makes you stronger.

When you are vulnerable, you expand your experiences and deepen your relationships. Vulnerability takes down walls and helps you better connect with others because you are honest and open, helping others relate to you on a deeper level.

11. Prioritize Exercise

Exercise should be top of mind for everyone. Exercise does more than make your body healthier. It helps with your mind.

Research says regular exercise is more vital to good mental health than how much money you have. Exercise improves your outlook on life. It boosts your mood, improves your sleep, and lowers stress.

Regular exercise increases the “happy” chemicals of dopamine, serotonin, and anandamide in your body. Make exercise a daily priority, and you will benefit significantly from making it a daily habit.

12. Find Your Purpose

“There’s no greater gift than to honor your life’s calling. It’s why you were born. And how you become most truly alive.” — Oprah Winfrey, an American media executive and philanthropist

When you find your purpose in life and do what you love daily, life feels like a gift. When you have meaning in your life, you live each day to the fullest. You feel like you can make an impact on the world.

Purpose is critical because it guides decisions and influences your behavior.

When you know your life’s purpose, you know who you are, where you came from, and where you are going. When you have a purpose in life, you are excited, happy, and mentally invigorated.

13. Embrace Change

“There is nothing permanent except change.” — Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher

Change is good for us, but it’s hard. We don’t like change. But life is nothing but change, so we should embrace it, not resist it.

When you welcome change, it will happen more.

Embrace change and treat it as an adventure. When you remain stagnant, you don’t grow. You must become comfortable with change to succeed and stand out in a competitive world.

14. Strive for Excellence, not Perfection

Perfection is unattainable so strive for excellence, not perfection. Striving for perfection can make you boring. Our differences and imperfections connect us to others.

To be successful, you should chase growth, not perfection. Excellence, not perfection, makes you efficient and productive. Perfectionists seek the approval of others and feel insecure, so they strive to be perfect.

Research says perfectionism leads to procrastination, depression, eating disorders, anxiety, severe stress, and low self-esteem.

With excellence, you have high standards, meet deadlines, stick to commitments, and do high-quality work. You are harsh on mistakes with perfectionism, and there is no room for error. Perfection is results-focused, while excellence is process-focused.

15. Make Every Day Count

You only have so many days in your life. One day you’ll reach that last day, so you must value every day you are alive. Make sure you wake up every morning telling yourself that you will make today count.

Find out what makes you happy, surround yourself with people who bring out the best in you, take time for yourself, make goals, follow your passion, and do what you can with the time you have right now.

16. Dream Big

If you set your mind to something, you can achieve it. Wake up every morning with what you must make happen that day. Have goals for what you want to accomplish in your personal and professional life.

You can achieve just about anything you set your mind to. Successful people dream big. Dreaming big will give you a sense of accomplishment because when you place your sights on something bigger than yourself, you have the motivation to make changes and act.

17. Be Honest

Tell the truth because honesty shows others what kind of person you are. If you want others to trust you, you must tell the truth. If you tell lies consistently, people will begin to doubt you.

Telling the truth is one of the most critical things to remember because being truthful means you learn from your mistakes. Truthfulness sets the foundation for building solid relationships. It sets the tone for others to be truthful too.

18. Ask Intelligent Questions

Don’t feel embarrassed or shy to ask questions. Asking questions means that you are smart because no one knows everything. The best way to learn is by asking intelligent questions.

When you ask questions, you show others you are curious and eager to learn new things. It shows you want to know more about a topic. Thinking about how you ask questions, what types of questions you ask, and why you are asking questions can make a big difference in your life.

19. Happiness is Your Responsibility

“Your success and happiness lie in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy shall form an invincible host against difficulties.”— Helen Keller, an American author and educator

Only you can make yourself happy. Choosing happiness is one of the things you can control in your life. When you are happy, you’ll create success. You’ll attract success when you are happy and think positively.

No one else can make you happy. No one else is to blame for your problems. Happiness is your responsibility. Only you control your choices and your state of mind.

20. Find Mentors

“A mentor is someone who sees more talent and ability within you, than you see in yourself, and helps bring it out of you.” — Bob Proctor, a Canadian author

Seek out someone who is more experienced than you. When you find and cultivate a relationship with a mentor, you’ll perform better at work, advance your careers faster, and achieve better work-life satisfaction.

Mentors help you grow, offer encouragement, serve as a trusted source, provide feedback, and listen to you. Having a mentor is powerful and helpful for your career. Remember that, like all excellent relationships, a mentor relationship requires dedication, commitment, and gratitude.

Bringing It All Together

A successful life is about dealing with lessons that life teaches us. We must learn these life lessons to succeed. Success doesn’t happen overnight, so, in today’s instant gratification world, you must find joy in the ordinary, achieving small wins and reaching milestones along the way.

Life is about the process of success rather than the outcome. To reach the pinnacle of success, you must stay persistent, determined, and work hard. Pay attention to your actions, make sure your life is headed in the right direction, and learn from others.

“One man’s fault is another man’s lesson.” — Maltese Proverb

CONTRIBUTED BY Matthew Royse

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