Advice to new graduates

 

Things We Should Have Been Told at Graduation

Advice to last a lifetime.

  Instead of all the misplaced, self-congratulatory platitudes, we should have been told:

1. The best education enables you to pursue freedom and individuation, and in the longer term, leads to the fullest living and the greatest social contribution.

2. Always ask for plenty of advice, but only from people whom you admire or seek to emulate. Best of all, seek advice from great works of literature and philosophy.

3. On the other hand, don't dish out advice unless you are specifically asked.

4. Keep on asking 'silly' questions. People may look at you funny, but at least you thought of the questions.

5. Be very sensitive to your feelings and intuitions. They are your unconscious made conscious. And they are almost always right.

6. Don’t ENVY.  Emulate.   Envy, which is useless at best and self-defeating at worst, emulation is a good thing because it makes us take steps towards securing good things.

7. Make friends with people who pull you up rather than drag you down. 

8. Never get into a relationship because you are bored, lonely, or insecure, or because society expects you to. 

9. The same also applies to having children.

10. Don’t expect to find perfect love, perfect virtue, or perfect wisdom in this world.

11. Given the choice between laughing and crying, go with laughing.

12. Find whatever it is that you love doing and get on with it.

13. Think long term and have a lot of patience;  make a plan and stuck with it.

 14. Live mindfully and with gratitude.  The journey is the reward so do not miss it by getting too wrapped up in the mundane.



Source Link:
 21 Things We Should Have Been Told at Graduation | Psychology Today

 Published on April 29, 2012 by Neel Burton, M.D. in Hide and Seek

Neel Burton is author of The Art of Failure: The Anti Self-Help Guide and Hide and Seek: The Psychology of Self-Deception
 

Understanding Self-Deception, Self-Sabotage, and more