Blowin’ In The Wind

Most people learn over time, but often learning comes too late to be fully useful. There are certainly many things that I know now that would have been extremely useful to me earlier in my life; things that could have saved me from many of the mistakes and hurts I suffered over the years—and most of those that I inflicted on others too.

I don’t buy the romantic notion that my life has been somehow richer or more interesting because of all the times I screwed up; nor that the mistakes were “put” there to help me learn. I made them myself—through ignorance, fear, and a dumb wish to have everyone like me—and life and work would have been less stressful and more enjoyable (and certainly more successful) without them. So here are some of the things I wish I had learned long ago. I hope they may help a few of you avoid the mistakes that I made back then.

A few things among them are…

• The greatest source of misery and hatred in this world is clinging to past hurts.
• Waiting to do something until you can be sure of doing it exactly right means waiting for ever.
• Following the latest fashion, in work or in life, is spiritual and intellectual suicide.
• If people complain that you’re too fond of going your own way and aren’t fitting in, you must be on the right track.
• If you make your work your life, you’re making your life into hard work.
• Trying to please other people is largely a futile activity.
• However hard you try, you can’t avoid being yourself.
• Every winner is destined to be a loser in due course.
• The loudest noise in the world is the sound of people whining.

Read the full article at Things I wish I’d known when I was younger.