55 Harsh Truths You Have To Accept, No Matter How Awful They Seem

1. No matter how much anyone likes you or loves you, they have their own life to live and you have your own life to live. No one else is really going to help you or fix things for you. You are on your own and always will be.

2. “Being yourself” often isn’t enough. There is no inherent merit to authenticity (which is sometimes merely a euphemism for “stubbornness”). Sometimes you need to kill off parts of yourself so that something stronger and better can replace them.

3. Just because you’ve invested a lot of time, money, effort, emotion into something or someone, doesn’t mean that you should continue investing in them hoping that things will change. Sometimes its better to cut your losses and accept that while you may have wasted time and energy on something, that it’s better to stop hemorrhaging resources when it’s clear that you aren’t getting the outcome you want. It’s still better to have wasted two years on something that didn’t work out than wasting ten years on it because you figure you’ve invested too much to quit.

4. Pain, sadness, anger, fear, sickness, loneliness are all necessary for you to appreciate happiness, togetherness, serenity, healthiness and life in general.

5. Sometimes your friends don’t consider themselves as close to you as you do to them. The hard pill: This doesn’t make them a bad friend, it just means that everyone has their own social network and you can’t always be at the center of everyone’s.

6. Just because I would never do something to or hurt someone intentionally doesn’t mean they wouldn’t do it back to me.

7. The only constant in my life is me. I can do all I want to keep another person in my life, but we ultimately do not decide whether they stick around or not.

8. No matter how wrong someone is or how painfully obvious a solution to one of their problems is to you, sometimes they have to figure it out on their own and there’s nothing you can do to change that.

9. You’re not meant for some people like some people aren’t meant for you.

10. Super simple but… some things aren’t just meant to be. A relationship, job, whatever. It’s not lack of trying or wanting. It’s just how she goes, bubs. The fucking way she goes.

11. Sometimes I’M the problem. I’M the one who needs to chill out and back away from the situation.

12. Sometimes you have to forgive people for being selfish. And that sometimes you yourself have to be selfish.

13. You can’t help anyone that isn’t helping themselves. There’s nothing you can do for them unless they help themselves too. Nothing.

14. Sometimes there’s no right choice, sometimes the outcome will be bad no matter what you choose to do, but you still have to choose.

15. At the end of the day, I’m responsible for what happens in my life. Sometimes people do shitty things, that are unwarranted and out of my control, but I get to choose how I react to it and how it impacts my mental health. If I want to be free, its on me and no one else. Someone fucks me over, I shouldn’t have trusted them. I got fired from my job, I should have been a better employee. Oh, that boss was a dick? Well,he didn’t show up with a gun and force me to work for him.

Basically, the world exists. Businesses, governments and the people that make them up exist regardless of me. I am responsible for navigating that to the best of my ability.

16. If you had a rough past and genuinely became a better person, there will still be people from your past that can’t see past the person you used to be. You literally have to start over with new people.

17. Not everything can be solved with an apology

18. Temptations are healthy, and often point you towards something you need. It’s taking the temptation too far that is wrong, not the temptation itself. Like, being hungry is ok, but overeating is bad. It’s ok to be attracted to people, but objectifying them is bad. Those kinds of things.

19. Sometimes the reason you aren’t a doctor or lawyer or a well paying profession is simply because you were too lazy rather than not having the ability.

20. Just cause you like someone doesn’t make them not a shitty person.

21. “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness, that is life.” – Captain Jean-Luc Picard

22. An 8 year relationship might not work. People can change and diverge over time.

23. You are not nearly as exceptional or special as your parents may have led you to believe.

24. All good things come to an end at some point. Just got out of a rough spot because of that. Things are really starting to go good, and I really don’t want it to end, but one day it will. Hopefully that day is a long ways away.

25. The vast majority of people in the world don’t care about you as a person. They only care about what you can do for them and what they might have to do for you.

26. How I see the world is not how everyone sees the world, and that is not good or bad. It just is.

27. Opportunity cost is a very real thing. The time I spent scrolling through Reddit today could’ve been spent on something I actually enjoyed or on studying or helping people or anything else.

28. Wanting to help does not mean you aren’t making the situation worse.

29. You aren’t that important in the grand scheme of things. People don’t think about you as much as you think. Relax. Don’t sweat your small mistakes.

30. Your parents are not perfect, and you can’t change them.

31. For some people actions and words go in completely opposite directions. Always look at the actions.

32. It’s much easier to give advice than make change in ones own life.

33. Not all parents love their children. Had to learn this the hard way, and I see more of it everyday. It breaks my heart seeing how bad children are treated.

34. Your primary aim is not to achieve some purpose. You are not just a tool.

35. That thing that’s bothering you, that person you can’t get over, that death that you can’t move past, whatever it is, the answer is to be grateful. And it’s hard, and I usually can’t but it is the only way through IMO.

36. I’m never going to be as important to some people as they are to me, no matter what I do.

37. The people you love can die, just like that. Suicide, accidents, whatever. And the reasons you’re missing them are, oftentimes, quite selfish. If they killed themselves, then having them back here, right now, would probably just make them miserable.

38. People don’t have to like you and no matter how “likeable” you are some people just wont like you. That’s ok.

You can be the most delicious strawberry but some people just don’t like strawberries.

39. Some people like being unhappy.

40. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard you try, you’ll fail.

41. You are not guaranteed a job in the field of study that you have a degree in.

42. Life isn’t segmented (child, teen, adult, parent) it’s just a constant flow with no breaks to settle in.

43. You’re not responsible for anyone’s happiness.

44. No one wants to talk to a depressed person and depression actively makes you less desirable company to others.

That one hurts a lot, as someone who suffers constantly, I think I’ve often romanticized the idea that if people see that you’re not doing well, then maybe they’ll take the time to try and talk to you or brighten your day a bit. That’s not how it works though, they just don’t want to know. And it’s hard to blame them because it’s obviously not their problem.

That’s a particularly hard pill to swallow for me. The world doesn’t give a shit, it will move on without you.

45. Nothing in life dictates ease, fairness, or justice. We try to set up institutions to pursue these goals, but more often than not they are corrupted by the nature of people. It is hard to admit that your life is a burden you need to carry. It is hard to accept that sometimes, you will do everything right and fail. It is hard to address that however hard you push yourself, life is bound to throw new obstacles your way and never give you a break.

The hardest pill to swallow is that of total responsibility. But when we look in history at peoples who have attempted to relieve themselves from this duty, we find the genesis of despotism.

46. Sometimes it’s genetics, and it doesn’t matter how you try to counterbalance it. It sucks and, most likely, not your fault.

47. There is nobody in the world who can save you, it’s all on you. Be it your mental health or your happiness, nobody can help you truly except yourself.

48. Not everything will be logical or make any sense at all.

49. Someday, everyone and everything will be dead. It’s not just that you won’t be alive anymore, you won’t even be remembered. Regardless of what you or anyone else does, the end result is the same.

50. Love is a biochemical reaction that last for 6 month. Past that relationship are build and maintain on common interest and work. If you want a long term relationship to work you have to put the efforts in it;love won’t be enough.

51. High school smart is not the same as smart.

52. The people who hurt me may never feel sorry for what they did and I just have to live well regardless of that fact.

53. Sorry doesn’t fix anything. You have to amend your behavior and own what you fucked up.

54. Those who care about you can still end up hurting you, usually without realizing it.

55. Being good, truly good, requires doing good things without the expectation of receiving something in return. Only when you are inherently owed nothing for a good action yet do it anyway for its own sake do you enact true kindness.