40 Things I Wish I’d Known at 40
Book — Reasons To Stay Alive by Matt Haig
Unlock Life’s Wisdom at 40! 🎉 Discover “40 Things I Wish I’d Known at 40 — Reasons To Stay Alive by Matt Haig.” Embrace the journey to enlightenment and self-discovery. Dive into the book that will change your perspective. Explore it now
1. Appreciate happiness when it is there.
2. Sip, don’t gulp.
3. Be gentle with yourself. Work less. Sleep more.
4. There is absolutely nothing in the past that you can
change. That’s basic physics.
5. Beware of Tuesdays. And Octobers.
6. Kurt Vonnegut was right. ‘Reading and writing are
the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has
so far found.’
7. Listen more than you talk.
8. Don’t feel guilty about being idle. More harm is prob-
ably done to the world through work rather than idleness.
9. Be aware that you are breathing.
10. Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find some-
thing beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the
clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm.
Beauty cleans the mind.
11. Hate is a pointless emotion to have inside you. It
is like eating a scorpion to punish it for stinging
you.
12. Go for a run. Then do some yoga.
13. Shower before noon.
14. Look at the sky. Remind yourself of the cosmos. Seek
vastness at every opportunity, in order to see the smallness of yourself.
15. Be kind.
16. Understand that thoughts are thoughts. If they are
unreasonable, reason with them, even if you have no reason
left. You are the observer of your mind, not its victim.
17. Do not watch TV aimlessly. Do not go on social
media aimlessly. Always be aware of what you are doing, and why you are doing it. Don’t value TV less. Value it more. Then you will watch it less.
Unchecked distractions will lead you to distraction.
18. Sit down. Lie down. Be still. Do nothing. Observe.
Listen to your mind. Let it do what it does without
judging it. Let it go, like the Snow Queen in Frozen.
19. Don’t worry about things that probably won’t happen.
20. Look at trees. Be near trees. Plant trees. (Trees are
great).
21. Listen to that yoga instructor on YouTube, and ‘walk
as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.
22. Live. Love. Let go. The three Ls.
23. Alcohol maths. Wine multiplies itself by itself. The
more you have, the more you are likely to have. And
if it’s hard to stop at one glass, it will be impossible
at three. Addition is multiplication.
24. Beware of the gap. The gap between where you are
and where you want to be. Simply thinking of the
gap widens it. And you end up falling through.
Read a book without thinking about finishing it.
26. No drug in the universe will make you feel better,
at the deepest level, than being kind to other people.
27. Listen to what Hamlet — literature’s most famous
— told Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
depressive
‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking
makes it so.’
28. If someone loves you, let them. Believe in that
love. Live for them, even when you feel there is no
point.
29. You don’t need the world to understand you. It’s fine.
Some people will never really understand things they
haven’t experienced. Some will. Be grateful.
30. Jules Verne wrote of the ‘Living Infinite’. This is
the world of love and emotion that is like a ‘sea’. If
we can submerge ourselves in it, we find infinity in
ourselves, and the space we need to survive.
31. Three in the morning is never the time to try and
sort out your life.
32. Remember that there is no ing weird about you. You
are just a human, and everything you do and feel is
a natural thing, because we are natural animals. You
are nature. You are a hominid ape. You are in the
world and the world is in you. Everything connects.
33. Don’t believe in good or bad, or winning and losing,
or victory and defeat, or up and down. At your lowest
and at your highest, whether you are happy or
despairing or calm or angry, there is a kernel of you
that stays the same. That is the you that matters.
34. Don’t worry about the time you lose to despair. The
time you will have afterward has just doubled its
value.
35. Be transparent to yourself. Make a greenhouse for
your mind. Observe.
36. Read Emily Dickinson. Read Graham Greene. Read
Italo Calvino. Read Maya Angelou. Read anything
you want. Just read. Books are possibilities. They are
escape routes. They give you options when you have
none. Each one can be a home for an uprooted mind.
37. If the sun is shining, and you can be outside, be outside.
38. Remember that the key thing about life on earth is
change. Cars rust. Paper yellows. Technology dates.
Caterpillars become butterflies. Nights morph into
days. Depression lifts.
39. Just when you feel you have no time to relax, know
that this is the moment you most need to make time
to relax.
40. Be brave. Be strong. Breathe, and keep going. You
will thank yourself later.
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