The best advice I received. This is a good question, I have been blessed to be surrounded by really good people in my life.
People say, friends, come and go but the really good ones you can count with the palm of your hand and are the ones that stay and become family in the good and the bad.
One friend stands out, he told me once don't let the train pass you by.
When he first said it, I had no clue what he was talking about, but let me tell you when you follow your passion and you see the train of opportunity you know, and you must grab it and hold it and get on that train and follow your dream.
That's right the train of opportunity comes and you must take it, because it may be the only time that it will stop for you.
I am happy to say that Concave is a community of friends, normal people with dreams. Are we getting on the train?
Don't dwell in the past, always look forward.
It's ok to reminisce about the old days every now and then, but don't get hung up on mistakes or any bad stuff that happened in the past.
If we can learn from something in the past and implement changes that improve our lives going forwards, then that's absolutely fine.
But don't fall into the trap of lingering in the past, as that can tether you there and make you more and more melancholic, if not worse.
You can't change the past, so it's best to accept it and then pay it no mind any longer than necessary.
Instead, focus on the present (where you actually live) and always try to look towards the future.
It shouldn't be something concrete that you can achieve and then it's over (not that you shouldn't have that), but try to find something perennial that accompanies you throughout your life, a conceptual companion, so to speak.
Like e.g. a passion or general interest, so that you always have something to look forward to.
Something that gets you out of the bed in the morning.
Of course, finding something like that is not necessarily very easy, so how would you even begin to think about what it should be (without it feeling lame and thus ineffective)?
In order to figure that out, it helps significantly to first figure out want you to want from/in life.
That's usually easier said than done, but instead of trying to figure out what you want from/in life, it helps (IMO it's actually a prerequisite) to first figure out who you really are, i.e. to figure out what makes you tick.
That may sound trivial and as a given that you "know" who you are and what you want, because you're in your own head after all. But until we've gone through deep introspection we tend to only know ourselves as much as the average person knows roughly how a TV works.
In order to discover your true and honest self, you need to start asking yourself questions about yourself that focus on self-discovery and try to go deeper with every subsequent question.
It can start with a general question: What are things that I enjoy in life?
After you found a few things you can get more specific and ask yourself: Which things do I enjoy that seem to be characteristic for me specifically?
( For example, I personally love all kinds of puzzles-boxes, riddles, brain-teasers, etc.)
Then you could continue with: *Why* do I enjoy these things? What about them is it that creates this enjoyment for me? What triggers it?
( For me I can imagine that the generalization of my previous example is that I seem to enjoy the analysis of more or less complex systems and trying to understand how they work so that I can make use of them. )
To answer that you could pick one specific thing you enjoy and ask What about this makes me enjoy it?, Why do I enjoy it where other people don't enjoy it?"
( Here I could think that I like the problem-solving aspect of these systems. To encounter a question, a mystery, and trying to find a good or satisfying answer or solution. )
After a while, your self-questioning will start to get more and more abstract, because you're following the thread inwards towards the core of what makes you you.
( To continue my example: Why do I desire to solve problems, find solutions to riddles, analyze systems, and master them? Maybe it's because I yearn for control over the world. Maybe by understanding a system, I can make use of it.
And this control gives me confidence and a feeling of security in life.
So maybe I yearn to understand systems and solve problems because I seek confidence by means of control (over the physical world).
Do this line of questioning with many other starting points and you'll eventually get a significant level of understanding about yourself that you might not have had before.
The beautiful thing is, once you get a good understanding of who you really are, why you like certain things and dislike other things etc.
You will (as a side-effect) automatically discover what you want from life, i.e. you will find your perennial goal or reason d'être that you can always look forward to.
Because by understanding yourself, the things you desire and give you passion will have revealed themselves as well, as they are part of what defines you.
For some, that can be the desire to care for people in need.
For others, that could be building things. Be it homes, machines, art, programs, etc.
For yet others, that could be understanding complex systems.
Or a combination and/or sequence of these things (like understanding complex systems, then using that knowledge to build something from it, etc.)
Personally, in the past, I was feeling down most days because my mind regularly went to What if I had done X... or what if Y happens?.
I always had trouble going to sleep because of that, my mind racing with these questions and problems.
Once I took the time for some significant introspection in order to discover my core self, everything that I actually wanted and desired revealed itself to me, and I never felt glum about the future from that point onwards.
And this has been the case for more than 12 years so far.
=> Byproduct: You'll reveal what you want from life and automatically recognize your life's conceptual companion(s).
I.e. not something concrete you can reach, but something perennial that accompanies you throughout your life. Something which gets you out of bed in the morning, something you'll always have to look forward to.
In our lifetime there is so much advice that would be delivered to us where we need to pick some of those ideas and let them guide us in finding some solitude on how to live our lives in general.
In my case, it's business advice that was given to me by my supervisor when Im still in the corporate world. She said that if I ever plan to go to business is that "you should never taint your name in everything you do because you can scam or lie on a customer only once but if your
true to a client you can eventually create a loyal customer"
From that moment onwards her words engraved me deeply. When I once got into a computer repair and retail business I always told my customer that I am not here to take their money, rather I am here to try to fix problems in the best way possible where I have some expertise. In that honest approach of mine, I made a strong client base within the community. In all honesty, all the customer item serial numbers are being recorded for total checking and my shop has just a few incidents of dissatisfied customers.
Finally, the word of advice from my supervisor has to help me develop in every facet of my life today. Honesty is a big deal to me for I always strive to be a good person even when others are not.
