I absolutely love "How I Met Your Mother". Not only does it make you laugh and cry, it teaches you some great life lessons in each episode. We can learn many things from "How I Met Your Mother", from what it takes to get your dream job, to finding love (but not after 2 a.m.).
Spoiler alert: This article contains parts from all seasons, including the ending. Do not read on if you do not want to know!
1. You can't get your dream job over night.
"You're moving in with him?" - Ted
"I'm considering it." - Robin
"You're considering it? You barely know him! Plus, he's a loser with a dead end job!" - Barney
"We have the same job." - Robin
Robin and her dream job have never seen eye to eye. She has always had 'Robin Sparkles' in the back of her head and never have been able to move past that stage in her life. Robin came to New York to become a news anchor for Metro News 1. Then she briefly takes a job anchoring in Japan only to then return to New York to host her own talk show. It does take awhile to get to where we want in our career.
2. You won't find love by constantly looking for it.
“You can’t force destiny. If it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen.” Ted
Ted surely taught us a lot about love. The biggest lesson we can ever learn from Ted is, you won’t find love by looking for it. No matter how hard Ted tried, he struggled to find love and his happy ending. It wasn't until the last season where we find Ted finally not looking for love is where he finds his wife, Tracy. Ted spent years of his life searching for love, instead of enjoying himself without the worry that he wouldn’t find it.We all have that person we are meant to be with, but if we take a step back they may just walk into our lives when we least expect it.
3. Long distance relationships rarely work.
“Long distance is a lie teenagers tell each other to get laid the summer before college.” Ted
In season one of "How I Met Your Mother", Ted fell in love with Victoria, who moved away to Germany. After debating whether to end their relationship or not, they decide that they wanted to try a long distance relationship. We come to find in the very next episode that this was a mistake. Ted finds himself bored with their conversations and falling asleep on the phone with Victoria. Their relationship finally comes to an end when Victoria discovers Ted is trying to sleep with Robin. Even Lily and Marshall admitted when they tried long distance briefly, it nearly “killed” them. The problem is simple: you can’t fully develop a relationship without seeing each other.
4. If she has never seen "Star Wars" then she probably isn't the one.
Ted and Stella are what you call 'unique'. He thought she was the one. Until she told him she had never seen "Star Wars." They end up watching it and Ted concludes that if Stella dislikes it, he cannot marry her. The next night, Ted and Stella watch Star Wars, but Ted is really watching Stella to gauge her reactions. Eventually Stella asks him to leave the room for the time being, so she can watch the movie alone. When it is over, she tells Ted and Marshall she loved it. After an ecstatic Ted leaves, Stella confides to Marshall that she hated it. It was downhill from there.
5. Always suit up.
Barney's famous words of 'suit up' will always be in our minds. For him in the end, it seemed to always work. He was with as many women as he wanted to be, found love with Robin, and found his true love, his daughter Ellie. All of those thanks to suiting up. When in doubt, suit up.
6. You're going to end up making a lot of stupid mistakes in life, and that's okay.
Ted gets back together with his ex-girlfriend Karen from college, the same person who has cheated on him multiple times and hates his friends. Eventually, Ted realizes what a mistake he made and promptly breaks up with her. Ted isn't going to let this bump in the road stop him from finding the love of his life (or continuing to make stupid mistakes).
7. The best relationships are never easy.
Everyone knows a Lily and Marshall. There is always a couple that makes you believe that true love is out there, and that it’s something worth holding out for. You put all of your faith in true love in their basket- if they can’t make it work, no one can. That being said, Lily and Marshall went through a lot in nine years. They got engaged, broke up, got back together, got married and had a baby. Marshall’s father died. Lily got them into serious credit card debt. When they fought and struggled, it was real. But everyone still wanted the love that Marshall and Lily had together, because even when they had fights or tragedy struck or one of them was stupid, they wanted to work it out together, always (well, almost always).
8. The right friends are essential.
Throughout those nine seasons, one thing remained the same in Ted’s life—his awesome friends. They always pull him up when he’s down, again and again. When you find those friends, hang on to them and never let them go as they are very hard to come by.
9. Nothing good happens after 2 a.m.
“Kids, your grandma always used to say to me, ‘Nothing good happens after 2:00 a.m.,’ and she was right. When 2:00 a.m. rolls around, just go home and go to sleep.” Ted
The concept is simple, nothing good happens after 2 a.m. We come across this in the same episode where Ted breaks up with Victoria in Season one. Ted’s long distance relationship with Victoria has become stale, when Robin, the love of Ted’s life, wants Ted to come over to her place. Ted ends up lying to Robin, saying that he has broken up with Victoria and wants to be with Robin. When Victoria calls and speaks to Robin, she realizes Ted has lied to her. We can learn from this that 2 a.m. is never a good time to make decisions. It is too late (or too early) to think clearly, so instead you should rest up and save your energy.
10. There is someone out there for everyone.
“You can ask the universe for signs all you want but ultimately we’ll only see what we want to see…when we’re ready to see it.” Ted
"How I Met Your Mother" has come to an end. After years of searching, we see Ted find the love of his life. Unfortunately this reaches a unhappy ending when the mother becomes terminally ill and dies. Yet Ted is not left alone because he can, at last, be with Robin. We learn that no matter what age you are, how many years you spend looking for love, there’s always someone out there for everyone. Barney teaches us this too when his baby daughter, Ellie, is born. He expresses “You are the love of my life.”
After nine years of drinks at MacLaren’s, slap bets, suiting up, high fives, duels, “The Bro Code,” Robin Sparkles, playing “Have You Met Ted?”, laser tag, magic tricks, “The Playbook,” “The Naked Man,” “eating sandwiches” and getting lawyer’d, "How I Met Your Mother" came to an end.
