WHAT CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE?

 

What can make the difference?

This is the first question I ask myself.

If we look at the world, we see that there are many cases of people who have been successful in life and started from situations of poverty. On the other hand, there are quite a few cases of rich people who are extremely unhappy.

One of the things that makes me saddest is the thought of how many children could have become people of value, people who make a difference for a better world.

Every now and then I think about my classmates. There are some who I remember as a smart and intelligent child, who I then saw again as a narrow-minded, insignificant and prejudiced adult.

What made the difference?

🟡 It's not really surviving that should be our priority. Because a life of pure survival is not worth the effort of living it. 

Our priority must be to become people of value, and live a life worth living.

What are the skills we need to cultivate to become people of value? Happy people? People who love their life?

🟡     Here's what I think:

➡️ First of all I think we should see our life as a path of continuous growth. School and our childhood are just the beginning, they must only be the basis for our evolution, then it is our responsibility to make the right choices and promote the personal growth that will enhance us, making us special.

➡️ Then curiosity. We should always cultivate the ability to be curious, the ability to not take anything for granted, the ability to want to discover, to want to understand in depth, the ability to question our certainties.

The typical children's question,  "Why?", must continue to be our guide.

➡️ Rationality is another aspect we should cultivate. It's the ability to put our knowledge together, figure out if we need to know anything more, and be able to make choices that make sense.

Rationality must guide us not only in important choices, but in managing anxiety and fear, and in simplifying our lives. This is fundamental.

Our life is often full of superstructures, of useless efforts, of superfluous needs and desires, of choices and prejudices that complicate and unnecessarily burden our existence.

Knowledge and rationality must serve us for this: to become aware of what is really important.

➡️ The feelings: our emotions are what make the difference between an unhappy life and a happy, satisfying life. But we cannot be guided by emotions without learning to know them, and understanding how they deceive us. If we don't learn to know them and manage them, we become slaves to ourselves.

We must learn to take our feelings into account even in our rational choices. 

We must learn where our mind deceives us and what is really important.

➡️ Give meaning to our life:

I am convinced that to live a happy life, our life must have meaning. No one can tell anyone else what is important in our life. The meaning of one's life must be the fruit of personal research. Everyone must find their own way to give meaning to their life. 

This is perhaps the field of spirituality: stop every now and then in your life, meditate, pray, think and find within yourself what gives more meaning to your existence, what is worth committing to, what you want your role to be in this world.

➡️ Relationships: a very important study on happiness has shown that one of the most important factors is the quality of the relationships we have in life.

Our happiness is linked to others. If we get along well with our husband or wife, or with friends, or with whom we work, then we can be happy. If, on the other hand, we get on very badly with the people who accompany us in life, then we risk only having a life of resentment and unhappiness.

We must choose our companies, and who we want to live with, very carefully, because this will be decisive.

Determinant not only for our happiness, but also for the success of our life, because comparison with friends helps us understand our mistakes, helps us to reason and gives us comfort in difficulties.

➡️ Health. I put health last, because it is intimately linked to everything I talked about before.

If we do not take care of our knowledge, our rationality, our emotions and the friendships we have, we can never hope for good health.

Having good health also means loving yourself and being careful not to harm yourself. Protect ourselves from accidents, drugs, excessive and incorrect nutrition, unnecessary risks, excessive stress and lack of sleep...

We learn to give importance to health when it begins to fail. Sometimes too late.