Life is one big fiesta. It’s a way of getting cards in your hand and making the best out of it. Even if you have 2 and 7 (coming from no background at all) you can make a way to win the game. Sometimes it’s even better to get the worst cards on the table, to acknowledge a genuine way of inheriting the crucial instructions of life.

Let’s divide the instructions of the fiesta in 33 parts:

1. Have a firm handshake.

First we have to keep in mind that handshakes are cultural measures. If you go to Turkey or the Middle East handshakes may be very gentle. That is a good handshake to them. In Utah you are going to get what is called a Mormon handshake: enthusiastic, vigorous, and prolonged. If you go to Bogota, a handshake may be replaced with an abrazo (a hug or embrace upon greeting or parting) especially if you are well liked. The secret to handshaking is to mirror the culture you are in.

2. Look people in the eye.

The human propensity to look to someone’s eyes in order to find out what they’re thinking, starts very early in life. Around 9-18 months, infants will begin to look to their parents’ eyes to figure out what they’re trying to convey when their face is otherwise ambiguous. And we continue to do this for the rest of our lives.

The more eye contact you make, the more you put yourself out there. Thus the more confidence you have in what people will find once they get a closer look at you and peer into the chamber of your heart, the more comfortable you feel with looking them in the eye. And conversely, the more shame you feel about what others will discover when you open up to them, the more likely you are to avert your gaze.

3. Sing in the shower.

Whether you’ve woken up on the wrong foot, shower singing gets to the core of the problem and helps turn those negative feelings around. Research proves that singing combats sadness, anxiety and depression. And in the long term, it’s been tied to increased life expectancy and improved coping with chronic pain. So get the water temperature right, suds up and let it go.

4. Never give up anything. Miracles happen everyday.

While many people do utmost efforts to achieve their objectives, others tend to give up things easily. People should fight for the betterment of their lives but should understand their personal limits. Not giving up things easily not only teaches us to work harder to achieve our desires but also help us in understanding our strengths and weaknesses.

5. Always accept an outstretched hand.

No one makes it alone. Period.

That means you never turn away anyone that’s willing to help. Maybe they don’t do a great job or you may prefer to do everything yourself, but strength comes to those that work together. I almost always do things on my own and deal with problems without everyone else giving me advice and their opinions. But the truth is, you never know when one day you may not be able to do something yourself and if you push away everyone that once tried to help, you may find yourself up a famous creek without a paddle.

Accepting help will encourage others to continue to offer it. One act of kindness can often times lead to another and another and before you know it we have a world of selfless people that simply want to make a difference in the lives of those around them. So love the fact that someone wants to do something kind for you and always have a grateful heart and be quick to acknowledge those who lend a hand.

6. Be brave. Even if you’re not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.

Bravery isn’t something you hand out of the womb. You acquire it over time as you gain life experiences. You can practice being brave by acting on what your heart tells you to do and challenging yourself with new experiences, even when you’re afraid.

Bravery doesn’t mean that you’re never afraid to do something, on the contrary. It means that you’re afraid, but you move forward anyway.

7. Avoid sarcastic remarks.

Sarcasm is psychologically rooted in anger, distrust and cowardice. People using it are either angry or frustrated, don’t trust the other person (or even themselves) to tell directly, and are often afraid to take the risk to express their true emotional feelings.

It’s a nasty habit, like being an alcoholic. And changing one’s habitual way of speaking is difficult. So people can be addicted to a hurtful way of speaking because there’s an instant psychological reward: When I make you feel bad, I feel better. I don’t think so

It’s a dysfunctional and cowardly way to communicate..

8. Choose your life’s mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90 percent of all your happiness or misery.

And at first glance, research seems to back this up, suggesting that married people are on average happier than single people and much happier than divorced people.

However, a closer analysis reveals that if you split up “married people” into two groups based on marriage quality, “people in self-assessed poor marriages are fairly miserable, and much less happy than unmarried people, and people in self-assessed good marriages are even happier than the literature reports”.

9. Make it a habit to do nice things for people who will never find out.

Adam Grant in Give and Take, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, makes this crystal clear. According to his research, people who give unconditionally (the givers) are the ones who achieve the most. Right after them rank the people who “look out for themselves” and might even be mean or selfish. These are the “takers.”

Yes, takers come second.

10. Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all that they have.

Nothing gives people hope like a dose of encouraging words delivered from the heart. In a world where selfishness and sharp words prevail, people are dying to hear encouraging words, especially if that is all they have left.

11. When playing games with children, let them win (occasionally).

Unfortunately, if a child always has to win to feel good about herself, she might actually be at greater risk for feeling bad. Learning how to cope with placing second or even last goes a long way toward boosting a child’s self-esteem. Children who know their own strengths and how to focus on their personal best often develop a healthier sense of self-worth than those who always need to win.

12. Give people a second chance, but not a third.

Giving someone a second chance means we give him another chance to earn our trust. But that does not mean we instantly forget what experience has taught us. Trust must be earned over time, and we are foolish if we give trust prematurely. We can have a loving and forgiving heart that also practices wise guardianship over our lives.

Third chance? I don’t think so.

13. Be romantic.

All human experiences, including romantic ones, can be boring. The remedy for boredom is often change, right?

Should we then change our romantic partners in order to kindle our romantic flames? One prevailing view believes that this is the case. Although change is indeed essential to emotional intensity, there are several types of changes, and emotional intensity is far from being the whole story when it comes to romance. (Full link on Psychology Today)

14. Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know.

If you can become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know, then you can be a leader too! One the most important characteristics of a leader is the ability to have a positive outlook and belief in what can be achieved. They should focus their energies on what can be done rather than on what cannot and they should look to take action rather than spend too long in detailed analysis of what happened in the past.

Leaders must believe in themselves, in the people they lead and in what they are trying to achieve. Those leaders that believe in success normally succeed, while those who believe in the possibility of failure, normally fail.

15. Don’t allow the phone to interrupt important moments. It’s there for our convenience, not the caller’s.

We are never without our phones. Even worse, most people cannot resist jumping anytime their phone beeps or vibrates. We have let our phones take over our lives. Interrupting a conversation to take a call is as commonplace as checking email during a meeting. So don’t do it! (I did it for 6 months!)

16. Be a good loser.

Everyone loses at something in some point in their lives and this tips might help you become a good one!

Try not to think about. The more you think about what you have just lost the worse you will feel.

Accept the fact that you did your best. Sometimes you can hold the burden that you can do better, and you really can, but not that time. Time can’t be brought back.

Go over the event in your mind. Figure out how you could have done it better.

Learn to do it better.

Win!

17. Be a good winner.

Because winning is a great feeling, it should be scattered in a parts of how to be a good one:

· Good winners are generous. They look up at what they have accomplished, but they know that the win happened only because of many others have contributed to it.

· Good winners do not gloat. They understand they could have been the losers. They respect the efforts of others.

· Good winners are humble. They get an appropriate boost of confidence from the win, but they know enough not to get cocky.

· Good winners evaluate their performance. They know that every victory has flaws within it, and they don’t miss the opportunity to learn from mistakes they made.

· Good winners celebrate. Consider the feasts, festivals, and celebrations. Celebration is more than a party. It is a way to give thanks, and to affirm hope for the future.

· Good winners let other people celebrate with them. The joy they see in the faces of others becomes their joy. Not as flattery, but as affection. Good winners do not keep their “wins” to themselves.

· Good winners take time to rest. Whenever any of us have put out full effort to attain a goal, there is nothing wrong with being inactive for a while, for both reasons, to learn from the accomplishment and to regain strength.

· Good winners get back to work. The win of one day is not the same thing as a lifetime of honorable work.

18. When someone hugs you, let them be the first to let go.

This one is pretty simple. Sometimes a hug is just a hug, but others it’s a moment that someone really needs. Don’t make them feel as though you are in a hurry to get them go. A hug can be a powerful thing to someone but only if you let it be.

19. Be modest. A lot was accomplished before you were born.

The virtue of modesty requires a similar balancing act between bragging of one’s accomplishments and hiding them from view. These extremes have one thing in common: They deny other people the respect they deserve. A falsely modest person makes others fidget when he claims the virtue while flouting it. For example, when someone we know is a professional runner says with a wink that he attended “a few runs” we cringe. He knows we’re aware of his life, and in polished pretending to not display his feathers, he ends up spruce even more.

20. Keep it simple.

[Tweet ““Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.” C. W. Ceran”]

We have all heard the phrase of it. But the truth is that keeping it simple requires confidence and humility. We can all benefit if we can recognize that we don’t have to talk like a super genius to be seen as intelligent. There is tremendous genius in our ability to keep it simple. Don’t ever forget that many of the world’s most difficult problems have been solved with the simplest solutions.

21. Beware of the person who has nothing to lose.

If there is something crucial I’ve learned is that people who have nothing to lose are hungry for success, and they do not stop till they get what they want. In a boxing ring, a person without any family or friends will be ready to face any suffering and will fight till his last breath.

22. Be bold and courageous. When you look back on life, you’ll regret the things you didn’t do more than the one’s you did.

1. Always say what you want to say: How many calculations do you make before you say what you wanted to say? Do you fear getting judged? do you think people won’t like you if you were honest? In fact the only thing that will happen if you kept hiding your feelings is that you will lose your self confidence.

2. Always stand up for what you want: A bold person will express his needs clearly and will do his best to get them fulfilled. As soon as you start giving up on what you want just to please others your self confidence will go down.

3. Do not give excuses for your actions: If you did anything wrong don’t give excuses to the people around. If for example you dropped your keys then there is no need to tell people how tired you are that day. People who give excuses are the ones who fear to be judged by others. Bold people act normally even when they do mistakes.

4. Don’t give weight to the opinion of others: I personally know many people who gave up on brilliant ideas that would have succeeded just because some people put them down. Bold people keep moving with disregard to the opinion of others and that’s why they usually get what they want in the end.

5. Don’t let people control you: People always try to manipulate others by judging and labeling them. A bold person never responds to these attempts and he just keeps doing what he always does with disregard to the opinion of others. When someone tries to manipulate you let him know that you believe that you are right and that you don’t care about what others think.

23. Never waste an opportunity to tell someone you love them.

Never waste an opportunity to tell someone you love them, because you never know, tomorrow could be too late. Not every day you meet a person who has the magic to let you fall in love.

24. Remember no one makes it alone. Have a grateful heart and be quick to acknowledge those who helped you.

To succeed in whatever you’re trying to achieve, you can’t make it alone. Our countries were built on the shoulders of people that exhibited harsh individualism. But even the most accomplished needed help.

Steven Jobs has announced he’s stepping down as CEO of Apple, Inc., due to declining health. Under Jobs’ leadership Apple became one of the world’s most powerful corporations. But he didn’t do it all by himself, and Apple’s likely to continue its successful course because of the contributions of many talented people.

Our lives are criterion that we can’t make it alone.

25. Take charge of your attitude. Don’t let someone else choose it for you.

Putting life and challenges into perspective and reminding yourself that you have the power to change your attitude are incredible gifts. There is no doubt that life throws some curveballs, but hitting a homerun and reaching that peak is totally worth it.

Next time you find yourself seeking an avenue to bring a touch of positive thinking in your situation. Remember one thing – you are in charge of you!

26. Visit friends and relatives when they are in hospital; you need only stay a few minutes.

Actually a visits from friends and family may help in the healing process.

In addition to excellent medical care, a healthy recovery needs friendship, support, understanding, encouragement and reassurance. By bringing these to your loved one, you play an important role in their healing process.

27. Once in a while, take the scenic route.

An important part of a fulfilling life is setting and reaching for long-term goals. A lot of people have goals to go to college, get married, have kids, or to pay off debt or to retire early. Those are all fantastic goals. And with a narrowed focus, they can all be done much quicker than you might think.

But sometimes, the most direct route to get where you want to go isn’t the best choice. If you’re spending all of your time and energy focused on achieving a long-term goal, what kinds of opportunities might you be missing out? And when you reach that goal, will you suddenly be able to flip a coin and start enjoying the present? Or will you have to set a new goal that you can devote your time to?

Finding a balance between working for tomorrow and living for today is not easy at all, but I think it’s the key to a truly happy life. Living too extreme in either direction will throw your life out of the rails. You will either live it up today but have to live with the anxiety of not knowing what tomorrow might bring, or you’ll end up doing everything with your eyes on a “tomorrow” that may never really come.

So set your goals and make a plan for reaching them. But don’t be afraid to take the scenic route. Life can be very exciting if you let yourself get carried away with it every now and then.

28. Answer the phone with enthusiasm and energy in your voice.

We create a first impression every time we answer the phone, but that doesn’t mean we always put our best forward.

Technically, the phone is an interruption for those of us who handle calls infrequently throughout the day. This can make it difficult to refocus our attention on the caller the moment we answer and give our greeting.

People who spend most of their time on the phone face the different challenge of handling so many calls it becomes burdensome. This can make it difficult to give the last caller of the day the same level of positive energy that the first caller received.

Try to give a warm and pleasant greeting each and every time you answer the phone.

29. Keep a note pad and pencil on your bed-side table. Million-dollar ideas sometimes strike at 3 a.m.

I’ve personally witnessed (and I’m 100% sure you did too) a terrific ideas coming to me when I’m about to fall asleep. Not long time ago, when I read about taking a notebook with me everywhere, I became a real catcher!

Have in mind that we have nearly 60.000 thoughts per day!

30. Send your loved ones flowers. Think of a reason later.

As minor as it happens in my life, I cannot forget the ones that send me flowers. People think flowers are way of saying sorry. Maybe because it’s been sent so many times for that reason. But no, not you.

Do it because you really want. They won’t forget you! (I hope you’re not doing it because of the most occurring reason.)

31. Become someone’s hero.

True heroes aren’t just those who take first place, nor do they have a unique appearance. True heroes live among us ! They are the talented, quiet and significant people who show up each day, committed to being their best version, doing their best, and bringing their best to the world.

They are our parents, partners, friends, employers, and relatives. They are also our kids, cousins or the employees at a store. They don’t do what they do for applause or fame. They do it because they have a personal standard of excellence that compels them to be great and to connect their greatness with their world.

We each have the opportunity to be a hero in today’s world by understanding who we are, knowing what we do best, and finding a way to share these talents and strengths with the world.

32. Marry only for love.

Marriage is a big decision and there are numerous reasons why people get married. Some marry for financial security, or to manage an unplanned pregnancy. Some marry because they think it’s time, while others because they think they should. Whatever the reason that brought the decision, it is always recommended that love between the couple is a strong force in the background.

33. Don’t expect life to be fair.

What I found from Mike Myatt on Forbes was one of the profound justification of the last instruction divided in 11 rules:

Rule 1: Life is not fair — get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping — they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

What would you add to the list of the instructions of life?