Ten Rules for Being Human
This is another golden oldie that found its way into my email inbox on a couple of occasions.
I have included it here as I feel that it is good for us all to have a reality checkup from time to time. Reading this certainly makes me sit up and take notice of some of the negative self-talk that I bombard myself with occasionally and encourages me to eliminate such negativity from my thought processes.
Ten Rules for Being Human
By Cherie Carter-Scott
1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, “life.”
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately “work.”
4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
6. “There” is no better a place than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”
7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this.
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When I was overcoming a bout of severe depression, I found that, in addition to learning as much as I could from books such as Understanding and Curing Depression, I also gained extremely valuable insights into my outlook on life, and how my attitude plays such an important role, from the package entitled Total Success Library.
September 13th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
what did that say
September 14th, 2007 at 12:41 am
god thats depressing
September 14th, 2007 at 1:52 am
I have had this for years and read it regularly. It helps me regain lost perspective.
September 14th, 2007 at 2:18 am
I am nothing like the people I hate
September 14th, 2007 at 2:40 am
Uhm sounds like he has a lot to be depressed about if he cant even be inspired by theese words of wisdom
September 14th, 2007 at 3:27 am
When it says other people are mirrors of you, it’s not a literal thing. It does not mean that you are like the people you hate; it means that something inside them pushes your buttons because there is a quality or a way of being inside yourself that you have rejected or pushed away.
In short, your identity is reactively formed in response to “not being like that.” If you can accept (be with, without reaction) the other person, then you will have created space within yourself to *choose* how to be in the world.
September 14th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
This article ties in very well with the beliefs of the spiritualist church that I belong to. I try to live a lifestyle with guidelines such as the 10 mentioned here. A nice piece of material.
September 14th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Don’t waste time explaining the obvious to people like Melodious. These people are a little further down the spiritual rung than others and part of their life lesson is to know what is meant by “others are mirrors of ourselves.” Until you walk in another’s shoes you don’t know what you are capable of. Judge not.
And organized religions suck. Jesus told me that. He felt the same way so they killed him.
September 14th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
I would have to disagree with #6… How is “here” always just as good as “there”? What if I’m in jail right now, which makes it my “here” and the place i’m thinking of is Dysney World, which makes it my “there”… Clearly “there” is better than “here”…
September 18th, 2007 at 2:30 am
Did any of you ever think that life might be hell and we’re all being punished for something we did wrong in a different life.
I’d rather be there than here.
October 3rd, 2007 at 6:22 pm
ok number 6 just gave me a brain hemorrhage but the others are intriguing! i think the only way to be beat depression is to find the source! and forget the past nothing really matters in the long run but then what is the long run and what is life who knows you just part of the big team of beings !!!! i love to ponder………….. avd33
October 4th, 2007 at 3:03 am
A lot of people seem to be confused with rule #6. I have written a post to explain what I feel it means. You can find the explanation at:-
http://beatyourdepression.com/blog/attitude/overcome-depression-with-the-precious-present
October 4th, 2007 at 3:13 am
[...] that many people are having trouble understanding or accepting Rule #6 in the article” Ten Rules for Being Human,” posted on September 12th, 2007. [...]
November 1st, 2007 at 12:30 pm
[...] a piece of writing is Ten Rules for Being Human by Cherie Carter-Scott. 1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to [...]
November 6th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
I disagree with 8. Some people do not have access to all the tools. In fact most do not
November 12th, 2007 at 2:30 am
Hey, I love the 10 rules.
BTW, the headline is catchy.
July 10th, 2008 at 12:44 am
No matter where you go there’s always somebody trying to get you live by their rules… why not live by your own rules if you don’t like these or don’t understand them…
March 24th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
i like the 10th…