It's a common saying that "experience is the best teacher." Louis Bernstein knows it very well, and that's why he has shared 32 tips that he's learned throughout his life, believing these life lessons can help other people. On his 72nd birthday, he shared a detailed post in which he listed important life hacks he has learned and urged people to "add something you know to be true." His post read: "If you're lucky enough to get up to my age, the view becomes more clear. It may seem like nothing good is happening to you, or just the opposite. Both will probably change over time. I'm still working (fractionally), and posting here, because business and people are my mojo. I hope you find yours."
The tips are as follows:
1. It’s usually better to be nice than right.
2. Nothing worthwhile comes easy.
3. Work on a passion project, even just 30 minutes a day. It compounds.
4. Become a lifelong learner (best tip).
5. Working from 7 am to 7 pm isn’t productive. It’s guilt.
6. To be really successful, become useful.
7. Like houses in need of repair, problems usually don’t fix themselves.
8. Envy is like drinking poison expecting the other person to die.
9. Don’t hold onto your “great idea” until it’s too late.
10. People aren’t thinking about you as much as you think.
11. Being grateful is a cheat sheet for happiness. (Especially today.)
12. Write your life plan with a pencil that has an eraser.
13. Choose your own path or someone will choose it for you.
14. Never say, I’ll never….
15. Not all advice is created equal.
16. Be the first one to smile.
17. The expense of something special is forgotten quickly. The experience lasts a lifetime. Do it.
18. Don’t say something to yourself that you wouldn’t say to someone else.
19. It’s not how much money you make. It’s how much you take home.
20. Feeling good is better than that “third” slice of pizza.
21. Who you become is more important than what you accomplish.
22. Nobody gets to their deathbed and says, "I’m sorry for trying so many things."
23. There are always going to be obstacles in your life. Especially if you go after big things.
24. The emptiest head rattles the loudest.
25. If you don’t let some things go, they eat you alive.
26. Try to spend 12 minutes a day in quiet reflection, meditation, or prayer.
27. Try new things. If it doesn’t work out, stop. At least you tried.
28. Never criticize, blame, or complain.
29. You can’t control everything. Focus on what you can control.
30. If you think you have it tough, look around.
31. It's only over when you say it is.
32. One hand washes the other and together they get clean. Help someone else.
People were grateful for the tips and in the comments section, they shared their own experiences. A Reddit user wrote, "I'm 60. And I would only add two things to this list. 1 - Learn to control your expectations. Misplaced expectations cause more problems than people think. 2 - Learn to control your emotions. If you don't, someone else always will. Thank you, Lou. Your effort on this list is a thing of beauty." Another user. u/Vibingcarefully. wrote, "Life-long learning - few use their brains daily to look up a new word, examine something, tinker with a pad and pencil at math. I tell people to read a book daily - this internet world really has changed people. My basics - take a walk daily - 30 minutes, read something daily, eat healthy, write in a journal, be kind."
Image Source: Reddit | u/r0dica
Image Source: Reddit | u/Scribbler-101
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Pictured: A healthy practice?
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.