The Six Most Helpful Insights I've Ever Received from Others—So Far

Back in the mid-nineties I decided I would like to leave a list of lessons and insights that might help my kids avoid making the same mistakes I have made in life — mistakes that have cost me time, money, contentment and peace of mind.

I began writing down insights that, to my mind at any given time, passed for wisdom. The first thing I noticed was how much the things I wrote down were driven by strong emotions. I was primarily recording judgments on things about life that did or did not suit my preferences.

Finally, I realized that's not how wisdom works. Wisdom does not care about my preferences. Wisdom does not seek to make me feel better. Wisdom is about calling a spade a spade; seeing things, situations and people as they are — it's about recognizing the truth about...whatever...and simply accepting it.

Wisdom is an individual matter. And it's purely and simply about making one's individual peace with What Is.

Originally I thought my list of insights would be long — long enough to fill one of those bound books you can buy that has blank pages to write on. But no. I expect the list of insights I ultimately come up with might do well to fill a page. Anything more would probably amount to needless repetition or self-indulgence.

Also: Originally I thought the insights might be products of my own grand invention. Not so. All of the wisdom I most value at this point has been received wisdom — realizations that other people have pointed out to me, and that I finally understood when and how they put it to me the way they did.

What follows is my list of Most Helpful Insights so far. Some are direct quotes, others are paraphrased:

1. "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest to fool."
2. The secret to contentment is to maintain an Attitude of Gratitude.
3. "Charles, you give people WAY too much credit."
4. There is not just one "world". Each of us has a world of our own making that exists only inside our own head.
5. No one else upsets us; we each upset ourselves.
6. When it comes to making a living, we're all pretty much working retail: we have a set of "customers" and those customers must be pleased.

If one is going to offer a list, marketing typically indicates that one should offer the top three or five, or seven or ten. Those are the numbers that sell. So, OK. I'll offer a seventh insight. This one was not received from anyone. It comes from my own observation:

   7. Many, if not most of us have never really met ourselves.

See? Number seven is kind of a repeat of number one, but using different words. Oh well. I think that one bears repeating.