Life lessons in 8 years of travelling
Benny Lewis spent eight years after his college travelling the world, likely seeing places and speaking languages more than we’ve ever done; and most importantly experienced and learnt valuable life lessons than we can ever do in years to come. Some of them are:
- Everyone everywhere basically wants the same thing. Everyone just wants validation, love, security, enjoyment and hopes for a better future.
- Deferring your happiness to the future is a terrible idea. Too many people presume that when they have that one thing they can work towards for years then “everything will be alright”. It’s not. So it’s not how fast you reach your big goal, but it’s how you enjoy the journey.
- Seek out people with different beliefs and views of the world to yours and get to know their side of the story. Don’t take responsibility for convincing the world you are right. It’s important to acknowledge that maybe you are actually the wrong one. Spending time exclusively with people who agree with you on everything would never challenge you and allow you to learn so much more.
- Living a good life is the best way possible to convince people. Enough words and enough arguing. Just live by example and soon you’ll have people on your side when they see your results and how passionate you are.
- More money will NEVER solve your problems. Beyond the basic necessity, having more wouldn’t make you any happier. Spend enough time with people who are actually living on next to nothing, but having a full life, to truly understand this. Everything that is wonderful about life doesn’t cost a penny, and the rest is way cheaper than you think it is.
- TV is the greatest black hole of time available to mankind. People get biased news through it, watch terrible TV shows through it that teach them nothing, and it sucks so many hours of their lives away that they delude themselves into thinking that they don’t have time to pursue real passions in life. TVs encourage people to be antisocial.
- The Internet is the greatest tool ever available to us, but daily use must be capped. Use it to enrich your life, but put a cap on how much you use it so you can get out and live that life. The real social network is out there in the real world.
- Get outside and do something with other people. The world that is worth experiencing is not in books or on TV or computer screens. It’s with other human beings.
There’s a lot more on his blog post so drop by and read what he has learnt.
