One of my favourite blog posts from my blog before we had a revamp. Reading this back at 25 (with a few more lessons learnt), I love reading this post from younger me, and thought I would bring it back…
A couple of weeks ago I turned 20 and I can’t really believe this is the start of the second decade of my life to be honest and that I am halfway there to being 40. But still, being young and living in this moment I feel there are so many things I’ve learned for myself, by myself in my limited time on this planet from being quite a perceptive girl growing into a young woman.
Before turning 20 I learned…
1. If you think someone is playing you, someone isn’t being real or something isn’t right in a situation then you’re right. Trust your instinct.
2. You are a reflection of the way you love and treat others. Not of who can love you and how people treat you.
3. You’re not supposed to use a steel fork on a non-stick pan.
4. Self-confidence is good and is much better than self-loathing and is always a work in process that takes time. Don’t stress about being mocked ‘overly confident’ as long as you know where you stand. The label ‘overconfident’ sometimes exists in the eyes of people who lack any.
5. Quality over quantity always; this goes for which half of the pizza you choose, or the people you choose to keep in your life. Never settle; friends, jobs, life, literally when it comes to anything!
6. People will be negative about your positivity. People will call you naive. They will make you feel stupid over and over. They have 0 idea and 0 experience in what you have been through to get you here. YOUR POSITIVITY IS YOUR POWER.
7…to stop being a perfectionist cause it’s so fucking annoying; just accept you can’t control everything
8. TAKE RISKS, because if you don’t, you risk more
9. You are NEVER entitled to be the same person you were 5 seconds ago. You can change your mind, redefine yourself, you can change anything you don’t like. You don’t have to fit the perception you or anyone has created for you even if you don’t fit in the box because you simply don’t need anyone’s approval. Being true, real and authentic is so much more important and if people don’t like you for it, at least you were disliked for something you are instead of being liked for something you are not
10. You ALWAYS always always look good in red
11. Friends will come and go, and people leave. Let them.
12. Don’t not start a project or peruse an idea due to a lack of resources cause that’s just being lazy and comes from the fear of failure. The less you have the more creative you become and this applies to so many things but sometimes this leads to innovation or good change in your life.
13. Your mental health is probably the most important thing and should never be disregarded -and as cliché as it sounds, everything does get better as long as you always choose happiness again and again and again. You can’t get tired of picking yourself up 100 times because at the end of the day people can help you but in reality, it’s all on you, and I promise you will be the best project you have ever continuously had to work on.
14. You will become exhausted trying to make the wrong people in your life happy. Even at your best, you won’t be good enough for the wrong person and at your worst, you will be enough for the right ones.
15. Don’t grow up because life will happen in its own time. Don’t rush wanting to be with someone. As my controversially favourite quote on love goes… ‘Sometimes we have to find ourselves before we find each other’
16. Your mum is always right. That girl who you were best friends with who your mum told to keep a close eye on will eventually prove to be the one to mess you over in time. Somehow she just knows. She is a wise woman.
17. Laugh a lot.
18. If you hold back how you feel because you’re afraid of being hurt, you end up hurt anyway…
19. Travel to find yourself. Travel to love, learn and enjoy new things. Travel for the experience. Travel because there are things you can’t learn in classrooms and things you will never learn about yourself staying in one place. Not once have you said yes to an adventure, big or small, and regretted it even when you went camping with school for five days and have never been in so much physical pain after. ‘A mind that is stretched by new experiences can never go back to its old dimensions’
20. Everything happens for a reason and this has been proven many times to you. Bad things happen so you can learn from them and come out as a better person, like the girl who bullied you taught you hurt people hurt people, which usually most people learn a lot later in life than you did. Things don’t work out because it allows the space and time for things that are meant for you to click into place like not getting into the Uni you wanted meant you found somewhere you actually wanted to go and a course more suited to what you want to do with like-minded people and not because of how far your grades could get you, and you met the best friends ever at Uni and a whole other bunch of things that felt like fate. You just didn’t know it at the time.
I would love to hear if you relate to any of these or share some of the important things you have learned in your life in the comments below. Love always from yours truly,
Nish x
Nishi Selva 