Adam Lambert: What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two fully readable publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Adam Lambert said elsewhere, not written here

Compare and despair. Comparing yourself with someone else or what someone else is doing or what someone else has is a recipe for sadness. What matters is who you are and what you want.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 February 2023 source ↗

Others on this question

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Desmond Tutu Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984

It is that you know that you are standing out in this crowd because you are being carried on the shoulders of others. You know, you may have the capacity to articulate their aspirations. That is maybe something special you might have. But what is a leader without followers? I mean you would have all of these interviews and people will not — would not necessarily want to follow. No, I am a great believer in the fact that everything is corporate. Everything is corporate and you — as a leader you are one who can coax the best out of others.

Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗

Paapa Essiedu British actor

To find as many moments to laugh as possible.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 18 November 2023 source ↗

Simon Boas Aid worker; executive director of Jersey Overseas Aid

All our tombs will be unvisited in a few years - all our actions will mostly be unremembered - but the smile you gave the checkout lady or the kind words you gave to a stranger in the street could still be rippling forward. We all have that opportunity and it's a huge power.

Recorded Emma Barnett, BBC Radio 4, Today, as published by BBC News, 4 July 2024 source ↗

Diana Athill Editor and memoirist

That this was true, I owe to Montaigne. I can’t remember when I read, or was told, that he considered it a good thing to spend a short time every day thinking about death, thus getting used to its inevitability and coming to understand that something inevitable is natural and can’t be too bad, but it was in my early teens, and it struck me as a sensible idea. Of course I didn’t set out to think about death in a regular way every day, but I did think about it quite often, and sure enough, it worked.

Recorded The Guardian, 23 September 2014 source ↗