Here is to learning new lessons

Welcome to 2019!

I truly hope you enjoyed your well-deserved break, albeit short, and recharged your batteries. My sincere condolences to those who had to work throughout the festive season.

For some reason a holiday prompts many people to do some spring cleaning. While I was going through some documents I stumbled across a motivational letter I received many years ago.

Even though the letter is old, its content still applies and I would like to share it with you.

It is called Rules for Being Human.

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called LIFE. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or believe them to be irrelevant or stupid.

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error, and experimentation. The ‘failed’ experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately ‘works’.

4. A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.

5. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lesson. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

6. ‘There’ is no better than ‘here’. When your ‘there’ has become a ‘here’, you will simply obtain another ‘there’ that will look better than ‘here’.

7. Others are simply mirrors to you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.

8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you make of them is up to you. The CHOICE is yours.

9. Your answers to life’s questions lie inside you. All you have to do is look, listen and trust.

10. You will forget all this.

Here is to learning new lessons, listening to yourself and making the best of the new year.

And don’t forget, take care of one another.