Nah, but really tho – I am going into 2020 full of gratitude and equipped with many life lessons I’ve learned over the past decade.
First of all, remember that you never really know what people are going through, sometimes its best to assume the people you choose to interact with are trying their best.
After experiencing many different cities and situations over the past 10 years, I can confidently say that there is a big part of human nature that is pretty universal. All across the world communities thrive with people who share a commonality strong enough to make them want to love each other, look out for one another, and take care of one another.
Sometimes the commonality comes from trauma, sometimes joy, sometimes God-given family, sometimes the family we chose for ourselves – whatever the case may be, there are people everywhere trying the best they can with the cards they’ve been dealt in this life. The least we can do is try to help one another, with whatever tools or resources we have available…even if that is just a warm greeting.
Sometimes people’s “bad reactions,” “bad attitudes,” or judgmental comments are more about themselves than they are about you.
In the same breath, I also have to note that it’s OK to protect your peace. Personally, I always have a yearning to understand people and why they act the way that they do but it doesn’t give anyone permission to disrupt my life or take advantage of me. Setting boundaries (and feeling comfortable doing so!) is very important.
Second of all, don’t catastrophize! As a procrastinating perfectionist who has chosen a career that opens you up to a lot of criticism and rejection, I can’t lie – it has been hard sometimes to not feel like the sky is falling.
Over the past decade I have struggled with anxiety but it’s only in the last few years that I learned that the feelings I would sometimes get actually had a name. It was and still is really hard for me to deal with disappointments that are literally out of my hands – I hate feeling like there is nothing I can do, I hate feeling helpless.
But, sometimes doing nothing is the best thing you can do for yourself. The one thing we are guaranteed in this life is that time goes on. In time, things will be revealed and in time things can be healed.
Whenever I am having *a day,* I try to remind myself that tomorrow is a new day and the only sure fire way to fail at something is to stop trying. It just takes one day, one chance, one opportunity for life to change.
And last but not least, you really don’t have to have it all figured out. Age is really just a number and shouldn’t define where you should or shouldn’t be in your life.
Stay in your lane, focus on your path – your journey is your own and no one else’s. This decade has thrown me many, many curveballs and in a lot of ways I LOVE where I am right now in life as a newly minted 30 year old. Sometimes I honestly can’t believe that this is my life – I feel really grateful and extremely blessed. But I can also admit there are some things I thought I would have accomplished by now or experienced by now that I have’t quite checked off the list.
I am learning to have faith in my process and to look at any failure or disappointments as information that will inform how I move in the future.
At the end of the day, I am still learning and growing but I think if my 20 year old self could see me now…she would be proud AF. I am super excited for 2020 – I think its gonna be amazing.
