10 Rules for Being Human

When you were born, you didn't come with an owner's manual; you have had to learn the rules the hard way.

The following rules are intended to help make your life easier:

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around. It is the only thing you really own, or are guaranteed to keep for your whole life.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called "life on planet earth". Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons, or think them irrelevant or stupid.

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation - trial and error. The so-called failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately "works".

4. A lesson is repeated until learned. It will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you've learned it, you can then go on to the next lessons. If you don't learn easy lessons, they become harder. You will know you've learned a lesson when your actions change.

5. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. Every person, every incident, is the universal teacher. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

6. "There" is no better than "here". Nothing leads to happiness. When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that again looks better than "here".

7. Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate in yourself.

8. What you create in your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need: what you do with them is up to you. There are three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who watch what happens, and those who wonder what happened. Take charge of your life or someone else will.

9. Your answers lie inside you. All you need to do is to look, listen, and trust.

10. You will tend to forget all this.