January Lessons for Learning

- Thich Nhat Hanh

1. Detach
2. Know that detachment is not indifference, It is simply not reacting.
3. Be okay with not reacting even if it hurts to let things be.
4. Recognise your pain points and where they stem from.
5. Know that most people never mean to intentionally hurt you. They're just probably hurt themselves.
6. Remember, remember - practice patience against annoyance.
7. And if you intentionally hurt someone else, where does your pain stem from?
8. Think less about goals and more about change. What do you want to change and what changes can you make to get there?
9. At the end of the day, your struggle is yours but don't be afraid of schooling the fuck out of people who downplay mental health issues. Remember: "It is no measure of good health to be well-adjusted to a sick society." - Andrea Gibson
10. You get to define your own 'fun'.
11. Give yourself credit for the care you give yourself. And take it one step at a time. You can't cure all, heal all, feel fucking amazing in just one day. 
12. While communication is essential in maintaining a healthy relationship, what's more important is how you communicate. 
13. A wise friend said: "wanting a wedding and wanting to be married are two different things."
14. "We start off in childhood believing parents might have access to a superior kind of knowledge and experience. They look, for a while, astonishingly competent. Our exaggerated esteem is touching, but also intensely problematic, for it sets them up as the ultimate objects of blame when we gradually discover that they are flawed, sometimes unkind, in areas ignorant and utterly unable to save us from certain troubles. It can take a while, until fourth decade or the final hospital scenes, for a more forgiving stance to emerge. Their new condition, frail and frightened, reveals in a compellingly physical way something which has always been true psychologically: that they are uncertain vulnerable creatures motivated more by anxiety, fear, a clumsy love and unconscious compulsion than by godlike wisdom and moral clarity - and cannot, therefore, forever be held responsible for either their own shortcomings or our many disappointments." - Alain de Botton, The Course of Love
15. You can start over anytime.