Four Lessons Nature Teaches Us Daily
The ancient thinkers of the human race — Lao Tzu, the stoics, etc…all derived some of their wisdom from nature.
Nature is in constant flux, yet it is absolutely timeless.
A river which flowed back then still flows today, albeit with different water.
The mountains still stand tall.
Some animals are gone, but some animals remain exactly as they were at the time of these great men.
Nature has been teaching us lessons since we were chimps, but for the modern man, who is much more buried in his phone & computer screens than the ancient man, it’s a tougher to see.
Here’s 4 lessons nature teaches us daily.
Go With the Flow
When a breeze blows through the air, do you see leaves on trees fighting against it to retain their position?
What about when water is flowing downstream — does it appear to struggle to get upstream again?
We are different than leaves and water, but we could stand to learn this lesson from them. Oftentimes we get caught in rigid patterns.
If something isn’t going our way, we fight to change it.
Most of the time, the response that will bring you more calm and happiness is to just embrace what’s going on around you travel downstream with it.
See where it takes you.
You may experience something new, or at the least come out the other side feeling relaxed.
Go with the flow — it’s been in front of you this whole time.
Great Things Are Timeless
Great things are truly timeless.
Plants and trees die, and even animals cycle on through the generations as the years pass.
But that mountain has been there the whole time.
It stays mostly unaltered — possibly some small changes here or there, but the same mountain looms tall over the landscape for tens of thousands of years.
The Grand Canyon has been there.
The hotspots under Yellowstone and Hawaii have survived and not even moved, even as the Earth’s tectonic plates have shifted above them.
Great things are truly timeless — they do not alter much over the years.
The same holds true of wisdom which has been around for centuries.
These are forces far larger than our day-to-day problems, which in comparison are like the life of a bird or a passing rainstorm.
So in that sense, trust the book which has been around for hundreds of years.
Trust your grandma’s wisdom of what to do in a given situation.
There are plenty of new-age management “techniques” and methods of evaluating stocks and anything else.
But the techniques that work have been working for the pros this whole time.
Don’t get caught up in the moment to moment.
Great things are timeless.
Hard Works Pays Off
I mentioned the Grand Canyon just now — how do you think that got there?
Did it show up one day where there was just a little ditch?
Absolutely not.
The Colorado River was working at that thing, and not just for a few minutes.
Or a few hours. Or even a few years.
It took an incredibly long time for the Grand Canyon to form, and rocks exposed at the bottom (the Vishnu basement rocks) are 1.7 billion years old.
That’s a lot of history, a lot of time, and a lot of work.
But the Colorado River doesn’t have the force of a meteor, or the Hulk, or dynamite, or anything else of great enough magnitude to blow that large of a hole in the ground.
The Colorado River is just a river, which has been flowing downhill for over 6 million years — it’s not even the largest river in the US.
You don’t need to do something insane which has never been done before to achieve your goals.
You don’t need to be Michael Jordan or anyone else.
All you need to do is show up daily and put in the work, and over a long period of time, the results will show.
And you’re allowed to wait for a good break, too — the tectonic plates in the Grand Canyon region underwent a dramatic uplift at a certain point, helping the river cut down so far.
Sometimes you get lucky, but by putting in the work daily you prepare yourself for opportunity, and thus create your own luck.
Don’t Overthink It
Today’s final lesson, yet possibly its most important one, is don’t overthink it.
Humans are peculiar creatures.
We have a much greater “scientific” grasp of the world around us compared to other animals — or at least so it seems.
And yet, especially in today’s day and age, we struggle with a variety of anxiety inducing mental illnesses and fight depression and are paralyzed by the prospect of accomplishing our goals and everything else.
It’s quite bizarre.
Have you ever seen a deer battle with depression?
Or have you ever seen a turtle get anxious over anything? (except maybe a predator — animals get a pass for that one.)
The answer is no.
Animals just “do” things.
They go through a cycle of eat, drink, sleep, mate, run from predator, rip it again tomorrow.
They wake up with the sun and go to bed with it, rather than staying out clubbing till 4am and ruining their sleep cycle as a method of escape.
Animals, and plants for that matter, which literally just grow, don’t spend time preoccupied about other things.
It’s true that humans appear to have more brainpower than plants & animals.
That’s great.
It means we have a far greater ability to influence the world around us.
But with that advantage, we can’t waste time overthinking everything. We’re capable of so much.
We should try just “doing” it like the animals do.
Nature has been here the whole time, and it truly is the greatest teacher. By just sitting outside and observing it for a day you can learn a whole lot — and a whole lot more than the contents of this article.
Try it sometime.
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