TGIM: Illusions

Welcome back to Thank God It’s Monday!

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tl;dr My brain is fried after working 86 hours over the last seven days so I’m borrowing from another author for today’s TGIM. I have a leather-bound book in which I store my favorite book quotes and nuggets of wisdom and wanted to share one that gives me chills every time I come back to it.
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This is from “Illusions” by Richard Bach. It’s a list of (what I assume are) 11 rules (but I logged it back in 2012 and cannot remember the context). Regardless, these 11 tidbits wow me every time I open this leather-bound book to skim. Without further ado:
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1. You will receive a body. You may like it, or hate it, but it is yours for the entire period of this time around.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called LIFE. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons, or think them irrelevant and stupid.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error: experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately “works.”
4. A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain a lesson. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
6. “There” is no better than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here,” you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”
7. Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all of the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie inside you. The answer to Life’s Questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this.
11. You can remember it whenever you want.

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I hope you can take a few minutes to allow these to sit on your heart, see what hits home most for you. Maybe we can all (re)read this book together because I can’t remember the story at all but it must be good considering these goodies.

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This week, my podcast recommendation is new from Mark Manson’s Solved, “How to Finally Let Yourself Be Happy.”

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With that, do something hard this week! And let me know what it is.
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Until next time,

Shannon