Right now, I am visiting my 97-year-old mother-in-law.  Where the outdoor temperatures are a balmy minus 25 to 30, it does not matter whether you use Fahrenheit or Celsius. It is bloody cold here.  

One morning this week, I asked her what she had learned and wished she had learned EARLIER in her life. Have you ever thought to ask that of your parent or even thought about the question from your own point of view?   

Here’s what I wish I had known sooner.   

1. Do what is at hand and do it with the utmost sincerity. Do it with love, gratitude and an attitude of service – with zero expectation. Let what comes, come. Let what goes, go. Let it all happen with gratitude.   

2. You are needlessly drained by the amount of emotional energy you are spending trying to get something into your life that’s not coming OR trying to prevent something that’s leaving your life from doing so. What is meant for you will come your way; what is not will not.   

3.  Don’t label anything a ‘good thing’ or ‘bad thing.’ It just is. Accept with grace whatever happens. Am I in harmony with the unfolding or resisting it?  Surrender to the perfection unfolding.     

4. Mental chatter and mental models are the BLOCKS that keep your natural state of happiness from flowering. Mental models give rise to your mental chatter, and mental chatter determines your mental models. They reinforce each other.   

5. Mental Models are the cause of ALL your problems and sorrow. Not some or most. ALL of them. Once you identify a dysfunctional model and replace it with an empowering one, then the work begins of adopting it. The key is identifying the model.   

6. Using the if-then/when-then model is not helpful. You’re trying to fill an internal feeling that you’re not complete through external achievement. Recognize that you’re applying if-then. The more you recognize it, the more the model will drop.   

7.  Everything you do in life is a spontaneous expression of the joy within you. Your nature is fullness and joy. Therefore, you do everything from, not for.  In other words, you’re doing it from happiness, not to get happiness.