Every Day Home Truths

Some home truths I read about this morning from health24 and thought I could share. Mistakes we make every other day and then wonder, ‘how could I have been so stupid?’ These are summaries. For the full scoop, head here.

• Doing Business with family and friends – When you’re at loggerheads with someone over a business deal, and this person happens to be a friend or relative, that relationship will invariably suffer.

• Thinking you can fix people – people can only change themselves – you cant make someone else’s life different. Accept that some people are just unfixable and the problem does not lie with you, it lies with them.

• Expecting people to keep secrets – Now there are some friends/relatives you can trust, but the point is that few people can keep secrets. Not for long anyway. If you want to keep something really secret, tell no one.

• The Debt trap – Banks and shops don’t give you credit because they want to be nice. They give you credit because they can make money out of you. Ok, there are things like cars and houses which very few people can pay cash for, but once you start buying things like household goods, clothing and groceries for credit, you’re in trouble.

• Not getting things in writing – Where something is agreed upon, such as a special agreements in hiring or job contracts, get it in writing. If you’re unable to prove that someone agreed to, you have no leg to stand on.

• Rubbish in, rubbish out – Your body cannot be abused endlessly without any consequences. Late nights, smoking, lack of exercise and hard drinking – these are all things that exact their toll. Bodies fight back. Make friends with yours and treat it kindly.

• Everyone has to paddle their own canoe – Even if your parents or lover are prepared to take responsibility for your life, enabling you to do very little, sooner or later you will have to paddle your own canoe. Do your own thing – it’ll make you feel better, and it is, after all, your responsibility.

• Assuming there is one love-of-your-life – Many people make this mistake and when things don’t work out with this one person, they spend the rest of their lives moping about, not really making an effort with anyone else.

• Things are easier to get into than out of – You’ve said yes to helping a friend move or babysitting her impossible niece – just because you couldn’t get it together to say no. Or you’ve sort of let things slide a bit and got involved in a relationship that didn’t really work, because it was too much trouble to say so. Learn to say no.

• Sometimes small actions have big consequences – Such as having unprotected sex or ‘borrowing’ money from the cash box.

• No one has control over drugs – Many people, when they start taking drugs, think they can control it. Everyone thinks that in the beginning – and some even think that at the end – but still, lots of people die as a result of drug taking.

• Get-rich-quick schemes – Everyone dreams of getting rich quickly. But unless you win the lottery, of which the chances are regrettably slim, don’t hold your breath for this one. Pyramid schemes and other scams – the only ones who make money out of these are the people who thought up this scheme to fleece you of your money.

• Life does not stop when you get ditched – He’s left you for someone else, or even worse, he’s just left you. You don’t think you want to live and you don’t think you can carry on breathing. But, even though it doesn’t feel like that at the time, life does carry on. There is life beyond this person and chances are that given a while, you will stop feeling as if a sumo wrestler is sitting on your chest.