10 Timeless Pieces of Wisdom for our Modern World
1. Give yourself the option to change your mind, whenever necessary.
Looking back on the thousands of hours that I’ve spent researching and writing, I am monumentally grateful for the privilege of this journey; for its endless rewards of heart, mind, and spirit; and for all the choices along the way that made it possible.
Here are ten lessons that I’ve learned from merging work and life.
Of course, these won’t apply to every person, but I hope that they might benefit your own life, or compel you to contemplate your own journey and sense of meaning.
1. Give yourself the option to change your mind, whenever necessary.
Pursue a vision of artistic beauty even when it may lead to intellectual confusion and uncertainty.
Cultivate the capacity to form your own opinions, and become comfortable with the discomfort of not knowing.
It’s important to do this even if it requires you to metamorphose or shift your ideas about life, philosophy, and what it means to live an ideal life.
2. Release the need to work only for money, status, or approval.
Use internal motivation to find work that feeds your soul and your idea of a perfect reality, not what you think is expected of you.
External motivators only push us to acquire more of what will lose its glimmer with time.
Letting go of the need to acquire money or prestige allows for the emergence of true fulfillment and satisfaction.
3. Be giving and magnanimous.
Be unselfish with your resources and praise.
Always give credit where credit is due and seek to celebrate others rather than criticize.
Remember that we are all human on a quest to be understood and to understand.
4. Make space for stillness every day.
Get out in nature.
Meditate.
Take a walk with no agenda.
The greatest ideas often come to us when we stop trying to continually do, and instead be.
Allow your daydreams and bored periods to hazily drift around your unconscious mind in order to come up with new ideas.
The heart of creativity lays in a relaxed state of mind.
5. Our capacity for presence is far more rewarding than constantly striving for productivity.
As human beings, we tend to correlate our value to our efficiency, productivity, and how much we earn.
Of course, productivity has importance, because we need to get things done.
But constantly putting it at the forefront of our lives deprives us of the essential hope and joy that creates a worthwhile life.
How we spend our time is literally how we spend our lives.
6. Forgiveness is the tree of life.
In any close relationship, it’s important to continually forgive.
Our most significant relationships are umbrellas that help to shield us from the harshness of life.
These relationships also keep us afloat during the storms of our soul, where our deepest vulnerabilities lay.
To forgive is to breathe new life into ourselves and into the hearts of others.
There is no corner of shame that forgiveness can’t transform into luminous, effervescent love.
7. Continue to daydream, to envision, to enliven, to enrich.
Don’t be intimidated or apprehensive by things like culture and society, which will always pressure us to conform and blend it.
It is when we continue to daydream our lives into existence that the greatest innovations are born, dreams are realized, and hopes are fulfilled.
This also puts us in the driver’s seat of our lives, allowing us to embrace those elements that are crucial to our personhood.
8. Relentlessly pursue your passion.
What gives you purpose or passion?
Where does the sustenance of your life come from?
What individuals, ideas, and aspirations feed your soul?
Use self-inquiry to identify them, hold onto them, and give gratitude.
Let your passions be the soul-sustaining force that continuously breathes new life into your spirit, leaving you radiant and fulfilled.
9. When people tell you who they are, believe them. — Maya Angelou
People may not necessarily tell you in words who they are (and in fact, chances are that they’ll tell you the opposite), but their actions will always speak for them.
When that happens, you’re better off listening and believing them rather than holding onto the hope that they’re not like that at all.
10. Like a majestic tree in the forest, “expect anything worthwhile to take time.” — Debbie Millman
Our world is deeply seeped in a culture of immediacy, and it’s not slowing down.
We tend to believe the myth that success happens overnight, when it actually requires a fusion of preparation and opportunity.
Just like it takes time for a chrysalis to produce a beautiful butterfly, we cannot skip over our own journey to formation, because that’s where the alchemy of purpose unfolds into our own serendipitous story.
With great love and gratitude, Aurora