You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

by Eleanor Roosevelt

When one attempts to set down in bald words any answers one has found to life problems, there is a great risk of appearing to think that one’s answer is either the only one or the best one. This, of course, would be nonsense. I have no such all-inclusive wisdom to offer, only a few guideposts that have proved helpful to me in the course of a long life. Perhaps they may steer someone away from the pitfalls into which I stumbled or help them to avoid the mistakes I have made. Or perhaps one can learn only by one’s own mistakes. The essential thing is to learn.

“You are giving me back what I gave you,” she said, “and it does not interest me. You have not sifted it through your own intelligence. Why was your mind given you but to think things out for yourself?”

We cannot shut the windows and pull down the shades; we cannot say, “I have learned all I need to know; my opinions are fixed on everything. I refuse to change or to consider these new things.” Not today. Not any more.

The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you ever were before. If you can live through that you can live through anything. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.

I learned a liberating thing. If you will forget about yourself, whether or not you are making a good impression on people, what they think of you, and you will think about them instead, you won’t be shy.

There is another kind of fear that is prevalent. Very often people seem afraid to put their own capabilities to use, as though one could save one’s abilities and draw interest on them. The only interest, of course, comes from spending. Or they believe that if they make use of their own assets, some demands will be made upon them. “If I cannot do it,” they think, “no one will expect me to try.” This particular kind of fear is impoverishing because such a person never dares to find out how much he is really capable of doing.

We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.

One of the secrets of using your time well is to gain a certain ability to maintain peace within yourself so that much can go on around you and you can stay calm inside.

The most unhappy people in the world are those who face the days without knowing what to do with their time.

If people come up the financial ladder but still maintain a low educational standard, with its lack of appreciation of many of the things of artistic and spiritual value, the nation will not be able to grow to its real stature.

HAPPINESS is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively. After a short time, a very short time, there would be little that one really enjoyed. For what keeps our interest in life and makes us look forward to tomorrow is giving pleasure to other people.

To respect one’s fellow men is perhaps more difficult than to “love” them in a wide, vague sense. In fact, it is possible that to feel respect for mankind is better than to feel love for it. Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person’s stature is as large as one’s own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.

It’s your life—but only if you make it so. The standards by which you live must be your own standards, your own values, your own convictions in regard to what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is important and what is trivial. When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else or a community or a pressure group, you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.

No real harm was done and I learned again the lesson that you fear in apprehension far more than you actually suffer in reality.

Your ambition should be to get as much life out of living as you possibly can, as much enjoyment, as much interest, as much experience, as much understanding. Not simply to be what is generally called “a success.”

As a rule, however, particularly if you find yourself in a neighborhood or a profession or a job where your ideas are at a wide variance from those of others, there is no necessity, no advantage, in forcing your ideas down their throats. If you live steadfastly in accordance with them, you will eventually gain respect for your stand.

People often write, taking me to account for the fact that my children have made mistakes in marriage and been divorced. I can only answer that one has no right, once one’s children are grown and mature, to interfere with their decisions. If asked, you should state how you feel, how you think. But until asked, it is an intrusion to thrust your ideas on any grown human being. And if, when you do express yourself, there is a difference between you, you must respect the inherent thing with which you have endowed the child: the right of decision.

If you approach each new person you meet in a spirit of adventure you will find that you become increasingly interested in them and endlessly fascinated by the new channels of thought and experience and personality that you encounter. I do not mean simply the famous people of the world, but people from every walk and condition of life. You will find them a source of inexhaustible surprise because of the unexpected qualities and interests which you will unearth in your search for treasure. But the treasure is there if you will mine for it.

Intellectually, one may have known for years that certain needs exist, but until one sees with one’s own eyes and comes to feel with one’s own heart, one will never understand other people.

In group work, it is certainly the better part of wisdom to take the result and let the credit go.

At this moment, it is quite possible that the future of the world and of life on this planet depends on our ability to master the technique of getting along with the many different peoples who inhabit this globe.

Too many of us feel that any custom which is not our own is ridiculous or essentially wrong, that it is fair game for laughter or contempt. We could make no more devastating or stupid—yes, stupid—mistake. To show a lack of respect for another person’s customs is fatal to any enduring or self-respecting relationship.

There is no human growth without the acceptance of responsibility and I think it should be developed as soon as it reasonably can be. In too many families there seems to be one person who shoulders the responsibility for all, copes with the problems, makes the decisions, does the chores, looks after the sick or the elderly. In the family, responsibility should, if at all possible, be a community concern, in which all share to the extent of their capacities.

much….” It takes honesty and courage to accept the full responsibility when your first choice has been wrong; it takes honesty and courage to acknowledge that the fault was yours and you have no excuses to make.

It is, however, the better part of wisdom to regard the mistake as experience which will help guide you in the future, a part, though a painful part, of your education. For all of us, no matter how good our training, will make bad choices. All we can hope for is that if we are helped in youth to accept responsibility we will, through increased experience, make better choices as life goes on.

It seems to me that the mass media do not take as seriously as they should their immense responsibility to keep the people of the country informed. Too often, they present the news scantily and inadequately. They should present two sides of each question so that the people can have a real opportunity to form their own judgments. After all, both sides are news.

I have often thought that I had examined a question from every side and then found that someone else could give me a completely different aspect which, in many ways, might make a difference in my opinion, however carefully I might have reasoned out my position beforehand.

But it is an extraordinarily interesting thing to get things done; to find that, as a result of a certain amount of work, not only digging out facts but getting other people to work with one, something has been accomplished.

Getting at the facts. Learning to see for ourselves what our institutions are and how they function. This is a part of the duty of a citizen.

Unless indoctrinated, a child is too logical to understand discrimination. It is the duty of every self-respecting citizen to oppose the prejudiced indoctrination of children, to take his courage in his hands and say clearly, “I do not agree with this. I feel we are performing a great and senseless injustice.”

No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within.

There is only one way of combating corruption: that is not by eschewing politics; it is by developing standards of honor, living up to them, and requiring them of our candidates.

In a very undramatic way, people can do much to prevent corruption in politics, as in other areas of life. They must have the courage to live up to their own principles, to stand firmly by what they believe. This is often a painfully difficult thing to do. It requires unrelenting discipline and unshaken faith in certain values.

One thing no one can dispute: If you want a world ruled by law and not by force you must build up, from the very grassroots, a respect for law. It is the code we have created for our mutual safety and well-being. It is our bulwark against chaos. It is the fabric of our civilization. We cannot rip the fabric nor weaken it without danger to the whole institution which we call government. For the chief duty of the citizen is to make his government the best possible medium for the peaceful and prosperous conduct of life.

He said: do not be discomposed by the opinions of inept persons.