Reddit Users Reveal Life's Rude Awakenings, Answers Are Very Accurate

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PublishedNovember 12, 2024 6:10 AM EST|UpdatedNovember 12, 2024 6:10 AM EST

Have you ever had a rough wake up call in life?

Everyone seems to get a gut-check or rude awakening at some point in life. There are always moments when they realize reality isn’t like a movie.

Few things in the human experience are fair, the mask comes off and you realize that nitty gritty of how life works.

Reddit users reveal rude awakening moments.

That leads me to a fascinating Reddit thread I stumbled upon of people explaining rude awakenings they’ve experienced.

Check out some of the answers below, and let me know your responses at David.Hookstead@outkick.com:

You can excel at something, like a job, and still be overlooked in favor of someone who’s more well-liked, even if they’re not as skilled.
Literal rude awakening: almost every morning for about the first 2 weeks after my dad died I woke up blissfully having forgotten. About 2 seconds into consciousness the realization that he was dead hit me, and it was like finding out for the first time all over again. One of the most painful things in the world.
Burn bridges. It’s necessary. Some people just don’t want you in their life.
It is possible to outlive your child.
That some of the worst people in the world are some of the most powerful people in the world because of the way they are. Unfortunately, often people who are willing to do things most people aren’t to get ahead end up being the ones who accumulate a lot of power. Once you really internalize it, it is a sh*tty realization.
Ain’t no one gonna “save” you but yourself
Constantly putting yourself down and moping all the time makes others not want to be around you, and having a negative mindset 24/7 makes you a less likable person.
Not everyone is going to like you and you need to be ok with this.
You can be the juiciest peach on the tree and people will still not choose you.
Many people have so little peace with themselves that they have an overwhelming impulse to prevent others from living in peace.
The people you love and trust can hurt you. Honestly, it hurts more because you don’t see it coming.
Not making a choice is making a choice.
Taking a picture of someone I loved for it to end up being their obituary photo. It haunts me knowing that any photo I take could be someone else’s too, or mine. Life felt so much more fragile and uncertain after that.
Learning that forgiveness is more about finding peace within myself than waiting for someone else to change or apologize. Sometimes the closure I needed came from letting go, not holding on.
Sometimes you get sent to the hospital by a good doctor because of one bad blood test result and you end up admitted and on chemo that day and learn that your plan ‘to sleep it off’ would have ended up with you dead in 36 hours. Joke all you want, but every now and then it’s actually MUCH MUCH worse than a cold.
That often doing “your best” is miles away from “good enough”.
You can’t make someone want to change. And if they don’t want to, they won’t. Even if that means losing you, they won’t.
It’s not what you know, it really is who you know. You can be the most incompetent know nothing and not only get the job but keep it because of your connection to the right people. It super sucks but it’s a fact nonetheless.
There are some truly evil people in this world.

There are certainly a lot of “yikes” moments in the thread above, but it’s also full of very solid answers and advice. Multiple things can be true at once.

The biggest one that popped up on the thread that I only included a couple times is that many people will cheer against your success.

It’s just the way it is. Why is life that way? I have no idea, but it seems to be wired into human DNA to cheer against people, either openly or subtly.

If you find people who genuinely want to see you succeed, then keep them close. They’re few and far between. Most people either don’t care or don’t want to see people succeed because it’s then an indictment of themselves. That’s some of the best advice I ever received, and it came from someone in media significantly more successful than me. They said the reason people cheer against other people is that it makes them feel better about their own failures.

That’s 100% true. Envy is certainly a gross disease.