1. “YOU WILL RECEIVE A BODY”

You may like it, you may hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around. So many people are dissatisfied with their bodies, particularly young people.

Recommendation:- Learn to like it! Look after it! It is difficult to have a healthy self esteem, if you don`t like yourself. Good self esteem and a strong positive self image are essential to long term success and happiness.

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 think them irrelevant and stupid. (You may not even realise that they are lessons at all! – and if so, you won`t learn from them. Have you ever noticed how certain things happen to certain people?

Every time someone abuses you, each time you blow a sale, or your girlfriend/boyfriend dumps you, there was a lesson staring you in the face. If you find yourself being miserable most of the time, it`s likely you`ve missed a lesson somewhere along the line.

We are not here to be punished - we are here to be educated!

Everything that happens to us has the potential to transform us.

ACT AS IF EVERY EVENT HAS A PURPOSE AND YOUR LIFE WILL HAVE A PURPOSE.

3. “A LESSON IS REPEATED UNTIL LEARNED”

A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When we fail to learn a lesson, we get to take it again and again! Once we have learned a lesson we move on to the next one. We reach points in our lives when we are ready for new information (it`s called maturity!) Until then, something could be staring us in the face and we don`t recognise it. So life provides us with gentle reminders and if we don`t respond, it gives us a nudge, and then a slap at the back of the head!

“Growth is most painful when we resist it!”

Because most people fear change, they don`t change until they have to:-

They exercise and diet – after the coronary

They study at school and begin to work hard – when they`re about to fail

They start to deliver excellent customer service – when the customers are leaving

They work on the marriage – when the relationship is falling apart

Winners recognise the lessons earlier – losers ignore the warning signs.

And when we are forced to learn the lesson, what do we often find -

“That`s the best thing that ever happened to me!”

4. “THERE ARE NO MISTAKES, ONLY LESSONS”

There is no failure, only feedback! 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”.

We often celebrate our successes – but we don`t learn too much. Negative feedback is a powerful teacher. When did we get the most negative feedback? As kids! Everything was a steep learning curve. Did we think of it as failure? No! So when did we suddenly get the idea that failure was wrong?

5. “LEARNING DOES NOT END”

There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive there are lessons to be learned, which is bad news for those people who thought that learning stopped when they left school/university! Does life get simpler? No! But you can learn to handle it better. We know that we have to keep retaking lessons until we have learned them, but the other inference of this pillar of wisdom is, we should proactively learn. The future belongs to those who keep learning. What have you learned recently? What new skills have you acquired?

6. “THERE", IS NO BETTER THAN “HERE”

When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here”. Otherwise known as “the greener grass syndrome”. Learn to love what you do – cut out jealousy and envy of others. If you want to be “there” instead of “here” because you are surrounded by problems “here”, don`t be surprised if when you get “there”, you find the same set of problems you had when you were “here”!(because you probably took them with you). Remember, you create your own environment.

7. “OTHERS ARE MERELY MIRRORS OF YOU”

You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself. Lesson no. 1. Start learning to love yourself. One of the most important gifts you can give anyone is the gift of self esteem – helping people feel good about themselves. What about your own self esteem? What kind of self image have you designed? Some people are well balanced – They have a chip on both shoulders!

8. “WHAT YOU MAKE OF YOUR LIFE IS UP TO YOU”

You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours. Life is all about choices:-

“The entirety of one`s adult life is a series of personal choices, decisions. If we can accept this totally, then we become free people. To the extent to which we do not accept this we will forever feel victims” - The Road Less Travelled (M. Scott Peck)

When you ask people what they want out of life they say happiness, guess what - Happiness is a choice! It`s all in your attitude. You choose your attitude. The facts don`t count. The fact that it rains has nothing to do with how you feel – unless you let it!

The fact that someone cuts you up on the motorway doesn`t bother you unless you let it!

The fact that you didn`t get a job doesn`t mean that you are a loser unless you think that!

"Men are disturbed, not by the things that happen to them, but rather by their opinion of the things that happen" - EPICTETUS.

9. “YOUR ANSWERS LIE INSIDE YOU”

All the world`s great philosophers, teachers, leaders and wise men since the beginning of recorded time Confucius, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Buddha are agreed in one thing -

The answers to life`s questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust. They hadn`t got the benefit of modern neuro science, they had no knowledge of the power of the subconscious. We can now explain some of what they knew instinctively. They just knew that when people meditated they got insights, answers, truths. We know that the bio computer is capable of solving virtually any problem that you pose it. Many of the world`s greatest discoveries have come as flashes of inspiration after a period of concentrated thought/meditation or even sleep ( Study MOZART, McCARTNEY, EDISON to see how this phenomenon operates)

Plant the seed, wait, listen and trust!

10. “YOU WILL FORGET ALL THIS”

(Adapted from Cherie Scott Carter)

For some powerful, positive affirmations check out this video:-