Today I had a conversation with a nice older woman, who's much wiser and knowledgeable than me about life and the world. We talked for a while about our interests and hobbies. She was very humble and down to Earth, it just caused me to have one of those revelations where I suddenly became very aware of how little I actually know about life. She's accomplished a lot of the things in life that I want to do one day and I realize how much I have to do to actually get to that point.
The whole time I never felt like she was speaking in a condescending way to me. Usually I would just say what I think or believe and she would just ask me to expand on that a little more and explain my thinking to her.
She actually pointed out things about me that I wasn't really aware of like how I tend to apologize a lot for things that are unnecessary and that might be a sign that I care too much about how other people perceive me. She noted that it's OK to voice disagreements in a civil way even with people you like. And not to place so much emphasis on how other people potentially might react to something that it causes you to try to appease them for the sake of getting along. She said how it's good that I have the intention of trying to be nice, but I'm going about it in a unhealthy way.
I think the best advice she offered me is that life is meant to be learned by experience. A lot of people tend to adopt a certain ideology and then try to get their world to conform to that; however it should be the other way around. Your beliefs should be shaped by your life experiences by actually living life. So place less emphasis on reading other people's life experiences and start having your own.
There were a lot more things we discussed but I feel like these points stood out to me the most. This lady has inspired me to make small changes to my life. I think I should apply "measure twice cut once" to my posting style and post less often, but try to write more meaningful posts from now on.