Did the lessons you learned earlier in life help you? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
As you get older you might think back to those lessons and wonder about the person you learned them from. What tragic things had happened in their life for them to learn such terrible lessons themselves? You have sympathy for others who didn’t have the opportunities you did to learn from your mistakes, and to learn that some lessons just don’t help you.
For example, one of the things that I learned as a kid that didn’t help me is that to survive in life you have to let your work abuse you. I saw this first hand and when I asked I was just told that is how life is and you can’t avoid it. I didn’t agree with it as a kid, but I internalized it. You don’t have to agree with the stuff that you learn for it to negatively affect you.
As I got older and worked for toxic and abusive companies I thought well this is how it is. Yet part of me still disagreed. Eventually, that part won out, and left toxic companies, and was much happier. Well-meaning people can tell you things, but that doesn’t make them helpful or true. Anything that hurts us, is probably false and needs to be explored.
If you are facing a difficult situation and you are telling yourself something then if you have to remind yourself of something to deal with a situation, it probably isn’t true. You are still trying to force a lie down your being/soul. Talk to a friend, therapist, or whomever and ask them if what you think/feel is realistic or if it might be a misunderstanding. We all have misunderstood things in life, and sometimes with tragic consequences. I would rather be thought of as a fool by others than spend the rest of my life struggling with something that doesn’t help me.
I think the final life lesson is letting go. We can start to let go of well-meaning crap that we have learned by asking others for help.