I was talking to a neighbor today and I was yet again reminded of the big lessons I finally accepted this year.
1. Who you are is never a product of what happened to you, only a product of what you choose to do and who you choose to be after. Your actions are yours alone to control. You can treat people in the ways that harmed you or you can choose to not inflict the same pain you wish you had been spared. The way you answer that question is called your character.
2. Listen to people’s action’s. They will speak with more truth than words. People can’t be changed. They may changed themselves, but they won’t be convinced to get there, they cannot be saved or shown the way, and no matter how hard you are willing to fight and how long you are willing to stay, you will always lose the fight when the person your fighting for isn’t even fighting with you. Know who’s showing themselves as growing and being better and who’s using a smoke show to distract you as the offload onto you.
3. Love is not enough. Respect is also critical. The depth of love isn’t measured by just how much someone will take. Compassion is great but it doesn’t mean lower standards. No one who loves you will ever ask you to make choices that have anything to do with lowering your self-respect.
4. Stop taking your bad days, or moments, out on other people. Everyone is dealing with something you know nothing of. Everyone’s plate is full. Maybe if everyone stopped pushing their things into other people’s plates, we’d all have a little more room.
5. You won’t be any more successful in love at a size 4 than you were at a size 16 if you don’t take the same time and care to transform what’s on the inside the same way you did outside. No one is perfect. We all bring baggage to the table. The key is to evaluate your patterns, see where it began and decide if that is still what’s best today.
6. The decisions you make are up for constant evaluation. You may have made a really mature decision in the moment you made it, but years of education and experience later, you are allowed to reevaluate and update your choices. Maturity is understanding that as you grow and change, so do your choices. Keep updating yourself. We’re not working on dial-up anymore. Get with the times. Bring yourself up to at least 3G.
7. If you are living honestly, you have nothing to hide.
8. If the sun rises tomorrow, than no matter what yesterday brought, it was not earth shattering. If the sun stops rising you can panic. You may also be dead, so in that case, no worries.
9. It will all be fine one day. Today may not be that day.
10. The way you choose to feel about your thoughts will determine the course of your life. Hear everything that runs through your head with no judgement and then choose to act in a way that makes you proud of yourself.
Welcome to 30. It got real. Here’s some other really helpful life lessons that, hopefully, you’ll take my word for and spare yourselves finding out the hard way.
Good luck… and something about the odds being in your favor or whatever.
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