What Are The Lessons People Most Often Learn Too Late In Life?

1) You spend your first 20 years worrying what people think about you. You spend your next 20 years swearing that you don’t care what people think about you. You spend the next 20 years realizing that they aren’t thinking about you. A liberation!

2) Any day on this side of the dirt is a good day. Some people didn’t make the cut last night. I was hit by a speeding taxi as I was walking to a bus stop. I spent a month in rehab with two broken legs, a brain injury, multiple back injuries and other fractures. The night before I was hit, a young, married couple was also hit. They both died. Practice gratitude.

3) A woman I know spends most of her time thinking about how much she hates her thighs. She can give you a detailed report on what is wrong with them. She forgets all the places those legs have taken her, all the miles they have walked for her. It doesn’t occur to her that when she gets up in the middle of the night to pee, those very thighs walk her to the toilet. Spend more time appreciating what you’ve got— a heart that beats, a way to pick up your cup of coffee, the eyes that see that cup and know what color it is. Blessings abound.

4) There are two kinds of people in this world – those who believe there is enough to go around, and those who don’t. Here is an example: If Margo is leaning up against the car kissing her boyfriend, and I think how nice that must feel, do I try to steal Margo’s boyfriend or do I go out and get my own boyfriend? I go out and get myself a boyfriend. I don’t need to steal Margo’s. I know that there is enough to go around.

5) An old Native American woman was asked why she was always so happy. She said that she has two wolves in her heart and they are both hungry— one wolf is angry and evil, the other wolf is filled with love, and that's the only one she feeds.