Words of Imperfect Wisdom Learned
From an Imperfect Life
Lived by an Imperfect Man
OR
Screwing Up Is a Great Teacher
1. No matter how many words you use, no matter how clear you think you are being, no matter how rational you think you are….YOU WILL BE MISUNDERSTOOD.
2. Every decision begins with a great deal of thought and ends with a gigantic leap of faith.
3. A job is what you do for money. Work is what you do for the love of it. Sometimes you need a job to be able to afford your work. When your job and your work are the same, you have achieved success.
4. When you are good at many things, it is difficult to know what thing to do.
5. A decision requires you to choose one thing and to NOT choose all the alternatives. Being regretful about your choice only makes that decision worse.
6. Your future is never what you choose it to be. The only choice you have is what to do next. Each choice is a step toward the future you are creating but not necessarily the one you imagined.
7. Communication is a 2-way street and requires several attempts between parties even to sometimes be understood. “Pass the butter” can mean a variety of things depending on tone of voice, facial expression, and many other factors.
8. There is not one path to a desired objective. An obstacle can be overcome or you can just go around it and take a different path to the same place.
9. If two perfect parents were able to raise a perfect child, that child would be completely incapable of dealing with an imperfect world.
10. We learn of love from those who love us and from those who refuse to love us. (not mine but I like it)
11. The implicit often confounds the explicit.
12. Everyone has at least one superficial characteristic that they will spend much of their life using to explain why some people don’t like them.
13. Even the most intelligent person is still ignorant about most things. Nobody knows everything. Everybody knows something.
14. Not choosing is a choice. Not deciding is a decision.
15. While you are paying attention to what’s in front of you, you are not paying attention to everything else. Attention is like a flashlight in a very dark space. It only lights up a small part of what is at any one time.
16. Many times what appear to be opposites are, in fact, complements, both necessary for full understanding. Next time you find yourself in an argument try saying “yes, and…” rather than “yes, but….”.
17. Caring about yourself and caring about others are often in conflict. Doing either one to the exclusion of the other is not healthy.
18. Intentionally doing something wrong is NOT a mistake. It’s poor judgment.
19. Love is not affection. Love is not respect. Love is seeing the person behind all those characteristics for which you have affection and respect.
20. The person who tries to be perfect in order to be loved knows they are not perfect and so never feels loved. Love is never for the perfect but only for the imperfect.
21. The person who believes that it is because they take care of others that they are loved, cannot allow others to grow and take care of themselves.
22. Power is nothing more than the ability to deprive another of something they want or need. "Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other." - Carl Jung
23. You have control over gaining the approval of another. Simply do what they want you to do and how they want you to do it and they will approve. But you have no control over being loved because love is a gift freely given by another and can never be purchased by what you do. If you believe you are loved because of something you do, you will never really feel loved.
24. Doing the opposite of what is expected of you does not establish you as an independent person because you still must depend on the other to establish their expectation before you can do the opposite.
25. A person who derives their value from the love of another is not worthy of the love.
26. Not knowing when you will have children is excellent preparation for having children. Living is an unpredictable event.
27. Just because you think you should be a certain way with others does not mean that others will or should be that way with you. How you treat others is merely your choice, it is not a non-verbal pact you make with the world.
28. Thoughts are something you have, not something you are. Feelings are something you have, not something you are. Your senses are something you have, not something you are. Your body is something you have, not something you are. So who is it that has all these things?
29. If you don’t try, you can’t succeed. If you haven’t failed, you haven’t set your sites high enough.
30. Your parents had an effect on your childhood but who you become as an adult is up to you.
31. Parenting is more difficult after your child is 16 than before your child is 16.
32. Men are from Earth, Women are from Earth. It is possible to understand each other in spite what the pop psych books say.
33. What is called “love” at the beginning of a marriage is merely a fantasy that can hold the marriage together long enough for the partners to learn to love each other.
34. If you enter a marriage hoping your partner will change, the only thing that may change is your marital status.
35. Parents are wonderful until you are 3, an annoyance until you are 11, an embarrassment until you are 18, stupid until you are 25 and then they begin to become real people, achieving full personhood shortly after they die.
36. There are absolute truths but they are not typically found in history books.
37. You cannot be loved if you do not love yourself.
38. Your knowledge of love deepens with your knowledge of yourself.
39. If you haven’t spent at least an hour thinking about what you mean when you say the word “I”, you have missed something very important about being human.
40. You don’t really know something until you can teach it to someone else.
41. Contentment and regret is for those living in the past. Hope and fear is for those living in the future. Joy and sadness is for those living in the moment.
42. Creativity without productivity is wasted. Productivity without creativity is empty of meaning.
43. Take the time to slow your mind down without falling asleep.
44. Always value your work just a little bit higher than the last person paid for it and lower if you have no work.
45. The house you’re buying ALWAYS costs more than you think it’s worth. The house you’re selling ALWAYS sells for less than you think it’s worth.
46. Listening to your partner can happen even when they are not speaking.
47. Disabled people are not the only ones with inabilities. Neither my friend with cerebral palsy nor I could make the basketball team for the same reason. Neither of us was good enough at the game. Make the best of the abilities you have.
48. It’s easy to be fooled by a person you trust. Never feel ashamed for having your trust betrayed. Feel angry.
49. There are some teachers you remember until the day you die.
50. There actually comes a time when you forget the names of people with whom you thought you were hopelessly in love.
51. Those old friends you remember from 20 years ago or more, they are no longer who they used to be.
52. An addiction is anything you DO that helps you avoid moments of silence in your mind: sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling, reading trashy novels, watching tv, playing endlessly with electronic devices. All prevent you from encountering yourself.
53. It takes work to turn what you imagine into reality. And it will rarely turn out exactly as you imagined it.
54. Not everyone will like you. You won’t like everyone. Learn why.
55. Never forget: The person you’re finding it difficult to live with has to live with you.
56. Creativity happens best when you are not trying to be creative.
57. It’s amazing what you can hear when you’re not listening to anything.
58. Accepting helplessness is one of life’s most difficult tasks.
59. When you’re all worn out from trying to solve a problem, the answer is NEVER to “try harder”. Rest.
60. Remember, we are ALIVE until the very moment we are not.
61. Talk to old people when you are young; talk to young people when you are old.
62. Maintain a family tradition: ethnic, cultural, religious, or just make one up. Traditions are a glue that tie a family together.
63. Learn to defend yourself without attacking the other.
64. You are where you are now, not only through your efforts but through the efforts and sacrifice of the people who came before you.
65. Luck is nothing more than preparation meeting opportunity.
66. Every successful man or woman at some point acknowledges that they did not fully control their destiny.
67. Your mind is capable of knowing far more than what can be known with your senses. You just can’t prove it.
68. The assertion that there is a God and the assertion that there is no God are both religious beliefs.
69. Maintain a family genealogy of at least a few generations and teach it to your children.
70. Never be afraid to say “I don’t know”.
71. Your child needs parents. They will have plenty of time to acquire friends.
72. Always stand for what you believe is right, even if you haven’t always done the right thing yourself. We learn from doing wrong as much as we do from doing right.
73. There are some people in this world to whom you will be enormously attracted but with whom relationship will always be destructive. Resist the inevitable pull.
74. If you haven’t been foolish once or twice a day, you are probably living life too self-consciously.
75. Guilt is the feeling that you DID something wrong. Shame is the feeling that you ARE something wrong.
76. Hillel says, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?" That is, caring about your self is as important as caring about others and vice versa. Doing either to the exclusion of the other is destructive.
77. Human beings have an inborn need to be separate and independent of others and also have a need to be interdependent and in community with others. There is no perfect balance of the two.
78. It requires two people to agree to be in close relationship with each other but only one to separate: The major source of marital conflict.
79. You cannot achieve contentment until you can focus on what you do have instead of what you do not have.
80. More is not the same as better.
81. Sometimes letting it go is better than figuring it out.
82. Perhaps the hardest thing in life is accepting that you cannot control many important things.
83. You cannot TRY to be spontaneous.
84. You cannot be aware of yourself being immersed in the moment and stay in the moment.
85. Life: live it, don’t watch it.
86. “Deserve” and “fair” are imaginary concepts with no basis in reality.
87. Spend just 5 minutes thinking about “eternity” and perhaps you can experience a glimpse of timelessness.
88. Your children may look like you, they may act like you but they are not you. They have different parents.
89. None of your brothers and sisters were born into the same family as you were.
90. Don’t ever let life get so busy that you forget to listen to music.
91. If your child complains that you do not “allow” them to be grown up, they are not.
92. There are experiences for which humans do not yet have words. They are almost always the most important experiences.
93. Love is almost always experienced when you feel you least deserve it.
94. If, in the midst of every argument, one person would stop and say “I appreciate the sacrifices and effort you make for our family”, half of all arguments would disappear and the heat would be reduced in the remainder.
95. Each person in a relationship is, to some extent, sacrificing pieces of themselves that would exist were they not in a relationship. It is a necessity and does not warrant special privileges or confer moral superiority.
96. Take 5 minutes a day and try to see the world through the eyes of your spouse.
97. Saying “I love you” is necessary but not always sufficient. Saying “I love the way you laugh” or I love how you can juggle 3 things at once without getting flustered” is better. In short, try to express what prompted you to say those three important words.
98. “I love being loved by you” is not about the other person.
99. If you have been offended by someone…forgive them. If you have offended someone…..apologize.
100. Life is too short to be easily offended.
101. The words “I’m sorry” should mean “I regret what I did and I will try not to do it again.” It does not mean “I regret you feel that way.”
102. Making a change that is not effective is no better and perhaps worse than doing nothing.
103. More to come. There is always more to come. Life is an adventure.
104. People do not change until the pain of their current situation is worse than the pain they imagine will occur by changing.
105. When a woman cries and speaks slowly, she is usually sad. When a woman cries and speaks quickly, she is usually scared. When a man yells and speaks slowly, he is usually angry. When a man yells and speaks quickly, he is usually scared.
106. There is a difference between lying and exaggerating to create and interesting story…until you believe the story.
107. A cynic is nothing more than a disillusioned idealist.
