What life lessons are counter-intuitive or go against common sense or wisdom?

Source: Quora.com

A lengthy post ahead.

I love words of wisdom. Anything that's gotta do with wise old-man's precious one-two is fine with me. And I do love searching for them on the internet, on any random site which I feel safe enough (well, you don't want no pornography, do you?). Self-help quotes or articles are just as enlightening as making a trip to the temple (or a church or wherever your religion takes you).

Thus, I urge you to seek for them and place them in the heart. And make sure that you apply them to daily affairs as I can guarantee that they will help you when the time is right.

So, here, I'm going to copy and paste this wonderful, meaningful, delightful article/ideas from Quora.com.

Life lessons that are counter-intuitive or go against common sense or wisdom

Money CAN buy happiness
Focus on spending this money in ways that improve your happiness and reduce your stress levels, and be cautious about using it to buy things that other people say you "should" buy
- Buy a nice bed
- Improve your commute by living closer to work
- Improve your commute by buying a nice car
- Fix your computing experience
- Create a "life randomly screwed me over" self-insurance fund
- Overtip everywhere you go
- Entertainment centers
- Travel to see friends and family
- Learn to cook a couple favorite meals, and use premium ingredients
- Psychotherapy

Happiness = Outcome - Expectations
The key to enjoying life is keeping expectations low to the degree that you're always pleasantly surprised.
You can accomplish more if you work less and sleep more
Hypothetically a well-rested person working 55-hour work weeks can usually outperform a sleep-deprived person working 80-hour work weeks in terms of quality, all else equal (specifically for knowledge work).
Better to ask for forgiveness than permission

You can pay the farmer, or you can pay the doctor
Prevention (i.e. good diet and food ingredients) is an order of magnitude cheaper than treatment (most age-related diseases are correlated with poor dietary choices).
Your willpower/concentration is a finite resource, replenished when you sleep

Behavior is controlled more by your environment than your own willpower
If you try to stop watching TV your willpower will eventually break. If you get rid of your TV and use a browser extension to block Hulu/YouTube your habit will more readily break

A cheap chair and mattress may end up costing you 10-20x in doctor's bills

Work output does not scale linearly with manpower

Children's personalities are influenced more by parents' actions than words

Spoken communication has a massive non-verbal component

Intelligence and skill level are subject to diminishing returns

The biggest risk is not taking one.
Self promotion works

Success has little to do with waiting patiently

You choose who you love
After the first few months (when your chemistry is in control of your emotions), love is a choice that you make every single day, and when you stop making the choice to love, you start falling out of love right away.

Retirement is boring
When people primarily worked in manual labor for decades, retirement was a chance to rest after wearing your body out. Retirement was seen as "the golden years" when finally people could focus on their hobbies and other interests. Now, since people mostly work with their brains, retiring is a quick path to boredom and restlessness

Focus on your strengths

Being interesting is the result of being interested

You can't be anything you want to be
The reality is that you can be anything you want to be only if you have incredible focus, determination, perseverance, luck, connections, chutzpah, a positive attitude, a giving spirit, luck, people skills, the right connections, clarity in defining success, and dozens of other things

Buy “experiences” instead of material items
People generally don’t spend too much time reflecting on their “material purchases.” In fact, even the thought of these items has no strong effect on our psyches. Experiences are more powerful because your mind constantly revisits the meaningful events of your life. Stronger emotions are evoked when you're reflecting on the memorable journeys in which you’ve been a part of

Buy many small pleasures instead of a few big ones

Don’t make purchases simply to impress others
Humans crave social proof; if everyone wants something, we automatically assume that if we have it, we will be happy. What people fail to realize is that happiness is a state of mind: it must be achieved from within. No amount of money spent on highly-sought items will alter this feeling.
 Use money to improve your overall wellness

Use money to build stronger relationships with loved ones

Most people spend money they don't have to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't really like