The 7 Cardinal Rules Of A Well-Lived Life
Instructions on a life well-lived, courtesy of a 25-year-old movie.
Yuri Manei | Pexels In 1995, Studio Ghibli, a Japanese anime company, released a movie called Whisper of the Heart. It’s about two high school students struggling with their artistic callings, their feelings for each other, and coming of age.
About a decade ago, someone extracted seven rules from the film and released them online. The source remains lost, but they’ve been making the rounds ever since.
Like my own rules, they’re all quite simple, but much closer to timeless principles.
Here are the 7 cardinal rules of a well-lived life:
1. Make peace with your past so it won’t mess with your present
Bill Gates says the worst day in his life was the day his mother died. It’s a simple reminder that we all have regrets.
We all keep past versions of ourselves in a closet somewhere, and every time we open it, we feel pain and suffering. We can’t change the people we once were, but we can make peace with them. Open the closet and let in some light. Reconcile. Otherwise, our past will forever be a drag on our heels.
Life is but a series of fleeting moments, one forever chasing the next. The only place where you can live, act, and make a difference is the present. Today.
Pexels / Orhan Pergel
2. Time heals everything, so give it time
Sometimes, you can’t find the power to move on immediately. Sometimes, you want to kick yourself. That too is part of life. What you can do is allow time to pass.
I know you want to just fix everything and move on, but if you stitch a wound poorly, it’ll get worse down the road. So take time. Take care of yourself, your health, your broken heart, and your broken parts.
Sometimes, even what heals leaves a scar. Those will be with us forever. The least we can do is let them mend properly.
3. What others think of you is none of your business
Most of our scars come from wounds inflicted by other people. Words can hurt us more than weapons. But it’s not your job to imagine what arrows people might point at you inside their heads. The majority will never fire.
4. Don’t compare your life to others, and don’t judge them
Instead of taking shots at others, most people decide to draw up — and lose at — another imagined game: Who’s better? It’s a moot question. We have no idea what anyone’s story is like up to the page on which we meet them.
Mark Twain said, “Comparison is the death of joy.” Worse, it’s also the birth of misery. The less you compare, the bigger your capacity for empathy. Meet people on their terms. You won’t doubt yourself as much and be less prone to jealousy, which only leads to fear, anger, hate, and suffering.
5. Stop thinking so much, it’s alright not to know the answers
If you’re not supposed to think about others, nor what they think, what are you supposed to mull over? What you think of yourself? It’s fine to not think so much at all. Answers often come to you when you least expect it.
Make your choices. Choose a path. Be determined. Commit. But, once you have, let the chips fall where they may. You’ll know when to take a different fork in the road.
6. No one is in charge of your happiness, except you
At the end of the day, what you desire most in life only you can give to yourself. You already have everything. Right inside. Feel your heart. Point at your chest. There. That’s where happiness is.
We spend all this time looking for something we can’t see because it’s not there. The outside world is only as good as what you do with everything that happens in it. Are you cultivating your experiences? Cherishing them?
If not, it’s not fuel or oxygen that’s missing. Only you can relight that fire because it rests deep inside. Choose to kindle that flame. Protect it. Hold up its light. And let it shine for everyone to see.
7. Smile, for you don’t own all the problems in the world
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has over 160 million fans. He gets a lot of letters. But none like Haley Harbottle’s.
Haley has Moebius syndrome, a rare birth defect that, according to the National Institutes of Health, "mainly affects the muscles that control facial expression and eye movement."
She’s 22. She has never smiled in her life. Haley was supposed to have “smile surgery,” but her anesthetist made a mistake and she almost died. Soon, she’ll try it again, hoping to smile for the first time.
There is someone on this planet dying to smile. Yet here we are, you and I, walking around, often choosing not to extend this simple, near-automatic gesture to uplift our fellow human beings.
Whatever problems plague you in your day-to-day life, chances are, they’re not all that important in the grand scheme of things. We each have our challenges, but as long as you can smile, do it. Who knows who you’ll infect?
Niklas Göke writes a daily blog for dreamers, doers, and unbroken optimists.