6 Important Life Lessons to Learn From Dragon Ball

Goku’s story should be an inspiration to us all

I grew up watching Dragon Ball Z. I was addicted to it. The energy, the characters, the story, all made me come back to it time after time. To this day, I don’t think I’ve even watched an anime as incredible.

As time passed, I realized it was a lot more than just an anime. It taught me lessons that have stuck with me ever since.

Here are the 6 life lessons we should all learn from Son Goku’s journey.

Nothing Ever Ends

The entire series spans 575 episodes in canon. On top of this, you can add another 64 episodes from Dragon Ball GT and currently 24 episodes from Dragon Ball Heroes. The series started in 1986 and new episodes are still coming out to this day.

Whenever you think it’s over, the studio comes up with another arc or something. We could talk about each arc’s quality but let’s not go there. What’s sure is that there’s no end to it.

Without even talking about the number of episodes, the story itself demonstrates this. The hero, Goku, dies 3 times. The entire population of the Earth dies 4 times. Many other characters die multiple times.

When you think you’re done with one enemy, he pops up again. Frieza does it many times.

Nothing ever really ends. Sure, we, mortals outside of the Dragon Ball universe, only die once but apart from this, nothing ever ends. For better or for worse, there’s always some kind of continuation.

Look forward to the future. There’s always more to do. There’s always more to improve and discover.

Limits Exist to Be Broken

Throughout the series, the main characters encounter challenging enemies, often way stronger than them. That’s when Goku usually discovers some hidden power deep within him and wins the fight.

When you think you can’t do more, you usually can. As Tom Bilyeu recently said in an interview with Jim Kwik, you’ll run out of energy before you run out of potential. You’ll stop caring long before you run out of ability.

So whenever what seems like a limit arises, keep pushing and break past it. It isn’t a limit. It’s only a harder challenge.

Nothing Gets Accomplished Alone

Another recurring theme in the series is the power of friendship and love. Whenever challenges arise, the power found is within but it comes from outside.

When Goku fights Frieza in Dragon Ball Z, his childhood friend Krillin is crushed to pieces. Goku is then overwhelmed by the pain and transforms for the first time into a Super Saiyan. His love for his friend unlocks what later becomes an easy transformation for him.

Later in the series, the characters learn to fuse together and decuple their powers. Gotenks, the fusion between Trunks and Son Goten, transforms the two children into a powerful force against the enemy Buu.

It’s commendable to try to achieve something alone but it’s also laughable to hope to make anything incredible without others. We need each other to build upon combined strengths, to learn from each other, to overcome challenges.

Have Fun

The main characteristic of Goku is his obsession with fighting. While he always tries to solve things without a fight, he still loves to fight. No matter how strong the enemy is, no matter how high the stakes are, he always comes into fights with a playful mind.

He has fun. He keeps on trying to become a better fighter and never sees training as a chore. He pushes himself to extremes because he likes it. He tries to overcome everybody because it is fun for him.

Even after mastering many levels of Super Saiyan, he often starts his fights in his normal form and plays around with the enemy. Is it dangerous? Without a doubt, since it even gets him killed in Dragon Ball Super: Resurrection F, but it still never bothers him. Why? Because he has fun.

Too often, we take things too seriously. We want to accomplish something and forget that we started them because they were fun. Whenever that happens, we need to remember that we can never improve if fun isn’t part of the equation.

Fun is a non-negotiable aspect of improvement.

Have a Reason

As we mentioned earlier, Goku transforms for the first time in Super Saiyan due to the pain of losing his friend. This happens time and time again in the series but the one that stuck with me the most was when his son, Gohan, transforms in Super Saiyan 2 for the first time.

In a similar way, Gohan is overwhelmed by feelings when he transforms for the first time. In the anime, we see a flash appear and a bird’s image flying. He wants to fight for what Android 16, who was just killed, loved: life.

Gohan lets his feelings overwhelm him and thus reaches a level of power he didn’t even know was there. He isn’t fighting just to win against the enemy anymore. He’s now fighting for Android 16, for life, for the planet.

Trying to accomplish anything of worth isn’t easy. Trying without an important reason, a strong “Why”, is in vain. We can only hope to reach our goals when they matter.

Everybody Has Different Facets

Throughout the series, most of Goku’s enemies become allies.

Yamcha, Tien, Piccolo, Vegeta, and even one version of Buu, become friends with him. As we first see them, they seem like evil and we come to hate them. But as the series progresses, we see more facets of their personality. We see them as awful beings because of the context but they are more than just that context.

People learn from each other. Something happening one day doesn’t mean it’ll stay the same tomorrow. People change. People are not one-line personality characters.

Even when we have differences with others, there’s bound to be something to learn from them. Don’t hate people unconditionally. Don’t love people unconditionally. Discover them, learn from them, let them learn from you. Share, evolve, make the world a better place by keeping an open mind.

There are many other lessons we could learn from Dragon Ball. Despite being an anime about fighting, it demonstrates characteristics we should all strive to develop. It is a depiction of the world in a fun and loving environment where people fight to protect the place they love: Earth.

So go out and use those lessons. Find what matters to you and have fun on your journey to accomplishing it. Care for others. Learn from others and work with them instead of against them. Overcome your challenges and head for that limit you’ll never reach. Nothing ever ends so you’ve got all the time you need. You just need to start.