Now,
Let's look at the fifth lesson and secret to creating a life worth living without regret.
And that is to learn to value,
Respect difference.
To learn to value and respect difference in yourself and in others.
Now,
This was a very hard lesson for me because when I was a child,
I was so different from my brother.
I was the youngest of four kids.
My brother was two years older than me and he was into war and army and was very aggressive and had that aggressive energy.
And all I wanted to do was to create and to be creative and to paint and to draw.
And he would tease me and humiliate me.
And I was like,
What's wrong with me?
I judged myself and competed and compared with my brother and ended up feeling like I wasn't enough because of my differences.
Little kids,
We don't question what is truth,
Right?
When you were little,
You were four or five years old and your brother or your sister or your parents are berating you and judging you or humiliating you,
You're like,
Oh my God,
There must be something flawed and defective with me.
It was very painful looking back.
I allowed that reality.
My soul did because it started me on a journey of trying to figure myself out,
To understand the mind and to study the psychology and the understanding of how the mind operates and metaphysics and my spirituality all emerged from this quote,
Feeling of being different.
At a very early age,
I started to try to figure myself out.
When I was 16 or 17,
I was going to the library,
Reading books and trying to understand why I was different.
And then I realized one day,
After years of understanding that as I became the adult,
I realized I was never broken.
But all the knowledge that I gained and all the people out there that feel different,
They're not broken.
We live in a world that says we all have to be the same.
I should be like my brother.
Look at our culture,
Look at our wars.
It's all about everyone should pray alike.
Everyone should think alike.
Everyone should be just the same.
But we're not,
We're different and we're unique.
And when you can learn to value and respect difference in yourself and then in others,
You will live a life without regret.
You will stop competing and comparing because you'll know that you're valuable.
You'll know that you're unique.
And the true meaning of the word competition is not negative.
It is actually a beautiful experience,
But not the ego's version of competition.
That is to beat at all costs and to win no matter what.
The original meaning of the word from when the Olympics were starting in Greece and a group of men coming together to challenge and compete with each other,
Because competition means to draw out each other's strength is what it means to compete.
Calm is to pull out,
To draw out.
Petition is someone's strength.
I love to play tennis and I love to compete with somebody who's better than me because it draws out my strength.
It challenges me to become more.
And that's what competition needs to be.
In our world of twisted,
Chauvinistic,
Masculine energy,
It has become distorted.
It becomes winning at all costs and beating the person to a pulp and conquering that person,
Not celebrating,
Not drawing out each other's strengths.
And it becomes this hostile,
Aggressive energy.
I've got to beat everyone.
I've got to be the top dog.
I've got to climb to the top.
It doesn't matter what I've learned,
How I've challenged myself and how much I've grown.
I'm not at the top yet.
And you don't value the journey to the top.
You only want to get to the top.
And that's what true competition is to draw out each other's strengths.
Even if I lose the tennis game with that person who was better than me,
Man,
I played some shots and I never thought I would be able to do.
And they helped me draw this out in me because I competed with somebody who was more than me in this game of tennis.
And I can feel good about myself,
Even though I didn't win.
That's true competition.
Learning to value,
Respect difference in others allows you to stop the old competition and step into this new life-giving energy.
So stop competing with other people and let yourself be who you are.
Draw out your own strengths and own your uniqueness.
Because when I felt different,
It was my greatest source of pain and humiliation from being different.
And then one day I woke up and I realized,
Mikael,
Maybe I felt this way my whole life because I'm here to make a difference.
And in order to make a difference,
I have to be different.
And that's when I stepped out of that ego of not being good enough and stood in the spiritual adult and started to own the value of being who I am,
Of being myself,
Which is different.
And everyone else out there is also different.
So it's not like I'm the only different person.
No,
We are all different.
And seeing the beauty and uniqueness within yourself and other people is what has helped me over the years.
You can turn a liability into an asset when you can start to value your difference.
And had I not gone through this journey and discovered that truth and try to understand my ego's games,
I would have lived a life with lots of regrets.
But instead I chose a spiritual path through my metaphysical journey of being different and owning the uniqueness of who I am and also knowing others are unique in different ways and they're equally valuable.
I knew I was different.
I didn't understand it,
But I learned about it and I started to understand and I could love myself and I could begin to care at a much deeper level.
And that is the fifth secret to creating a life worth living without regret.
I hope you enjoyed this lesson.
This is an excerpt from my online course on Insight Timer called Nine Lessons to Create a Life Worth Living Without Regret.
It's in the premium section.
If you enjoyed this excerpt,
There are eight other lessons in this course that can help you to navigate and create for yourself a more fulfilling and rewarding life.
