8 Important Lessons On Surviving Life I Wish I Had Learned Sooner

1. Beg no one to stay when they have decided to leave.

Your love is not a cage for wild hearts, it is a gift that should be received. You are better than a story they will one day tell people about a crazy person they once dated who wouldn’t let them go. Rather be the person they speak about with only respect with the closest friends and company. There is no guarantee of this, but do not make it easier for someone who once had feelings for you to stop respecting you and the person you are.

2. People are either temporary or permanent.

And the ratio of temporary people who will come and go from your life is always going to be higher than the number of permanent people who stay. No matter how deep or how hard you fall for someone, there is always a chance it won’t work out. Actually the chances that it won’t work out are greater than the chances that it will. Remember that there may have to be a future after this person, that even if they leave, you must not let yourself be completely destroyed.

3. Stop holding onto people who are not afraid of losing you.

If someone loves you, they will make time for you, they will heed your feelings about something that is truly painful and they will apologise and acknowledge it if they hurt you. How ever there will be people that you will love even though they have either fallen out of love with you or not loved you at all. You can bring them the stars but you cannot make someone love you. Let them go. Let them become the strangers they want to be to you, and go find something better, more real with someone who has real love for you.

4. Don’t wait. Save yourself today.

If you are waiting for the person who is going to save your life, you need only to look in the mirror. The truth is, no one else is going to rescue you. I don’t know when this hits each one of us, but it usually hits people young. The first ever time something terrible happens and you are looking for someone, anyone to come to save you and the horrible realisation dawns on you that there is no one but you standing there to save yourself. You are disappointed because you read in the fairy tales, and watch on the TV shows, where good always defeats evil. Except in real life that doesn’t happen. In real life, sometimes, evil wins. And there is no one coming to save you, you are going to have to take your life by the reigns and save yourself.

5. Write your own fairy tale.

The reason is because every story is beautiful. And the only reason fairy tales are unrealistic is because you have been reading someone else’s stories. Its time for you to take a deep breath and remember that a fairy tale can be as realistic as you want it to be, that all fairy tales aren’t happy and some have terrible endings. Every story does not have to be happy, but every story can be beautiful and unique in its own way, so write your own.

6.Teach others how to love you by loving yourself first.

How is someone else going to know how to love you if you do not love yourself? You are a deeply complex being, entirely different from the next person because you experience life in an entirely unique way from them. Which is why you have different ways you need to be loved from them. The way you love yourself will determine the way the person who you are with will mould their love towards you. If you do not know how to love yourself, then they will not know how to respect and love you. Learn to love yourself, even your flaws so that you can teach the person you are with how to love you.

7. Let your sadness breathe.

Find a place where you can let the pain out, plant it in some creative soil perhaps and just let it grow into something of its own. Paint, draw, dance, work out – find an outlet for it that strengthens you rather than bottling it up until it destroys you. Because if you bury your sadness under your skin instead of letting it out, what else can it do but grow in your veins, to your heart? 

8. Remember how much you have survived.

Your world has fallen apart before. Time and time again and the rest of the world has still kept going despite the fact that you are broken. And after thinking you will never recover, never get up off the floor again, you have, dusted yourself off and carried on. If you have survived your world shattering, over and over again, and you are still here, a bit damaged, a bit broken but still here – you should be proud of yourself. Because that is no small thing.