New Year’s is an excellent reminder to do some self-reflection. I have been taking some time to reflect upon the last decade, as well as considering what I hope the next decade will bring. Here are a few of my thoughts.
This past decade has been full and complicated. Here are just a few of the highlights:
- I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree and a Master’s Degree.
- I taught for eight years in four different schools.
- I moved across the country.
- Launched a career as a freelance writer
- Made countless friends, and lost some along the way
- Learned about love, loss, myself, and relationships
- Wrote the first draft of a novel
That is a whole lot of life that I have squeezed into the last ten years. I am proud of myself for the things that I have accomplished, but I am even more pleased with some of the lessons that I have learned along the way. Here a few lessons that stick out to me from the past decade.
Lessons Learned
1. Take things one step at a time.
It is good to have hopes and dreams for the future, but in reality, you can only do your best with the day that you have today. Sometimes, you have to take a step without knowing the outcome. It took a lot of faith, but there are several times when I have made a step, even though I did not know what the long-term plan was.
God works one step at a time. So should you.
For example, I quit teaching to focus on writing and my mental health. This is the right step for me right now, but I still have no idea if or when I will go back to teaching. I could go back in eight months, or five years or I might never go back at all. But I know from experience that the Holy Spirit, and my own desires/intuition/circumstances, will guide me when the time is right.
Keep your hopes and dreams in the back of your mind as you work on the smaller action steps that it will take to get you there. Have enough faith to take one step, even if you do not know what the step after that looks like.
2. Stop putting life on hold.
So many of us put our lives on hold, waiting for something to happen before we can live and enjoy life. That is a mistake. Jesus came so that we may have life abundantly! That did not come with qualifications. He did not come so that we could have life abundantly as soon as we get married, or get the perfect job. He came so that we might have life abundantly, every day, no matter what season of life we are in.
Ten years ago, I believed that I would find love around the corner, that I would get married, and have multiple children by now. A couple of years later, I began to realize that love was not coming as quickly as I had expected it to. I could not continue waiting for a husband. I used to think that my finances would get better once I had a husband (two incomes would be helpful). But I decided that I was going to get my financial situation in control on my own before that. If (and hopefully when) I do decide to get married, we will have a better start because I have been working on my own financial situation for many years. I keep taking steps to get where I want my life to go. If a man comes in the picture, he can find a way to work into the life that I have already built. I refuse to put my hopes and dreams on hold just because I do not have a husband.
Stop waiting for that thing that you think is going to make your life complete. If you want to get in shape, buy a house, travel the world, or write a novel, do it now. A significant other or a promotion at work, or whatever else you are waiting for, is only going to make it more complicated later. So, you might as well get a head start while you can.
3. Take advice with a grain of salt.
I have always been someone who processes my thoughts by talking about them. So, I speak to a lot of people about pretty much every aspect of my life, and I try to practice the advice that they give me. However, I have learned that you need to take advice with a grain of salt.
I am going to write another blog about this in the next few weeks, so I won’t bore you with the details right now. But let me leave you with this one thought. Consider the source when you take advice from people. If they are telling you to act a certain way, do they act it out in their own lives? More importantly, does it have the desired effect? If you wanted to learn to paint abstract art, would you take advice from a renaissance sculptor? You have two different desired outcomes, so do not follow advice if it does not line up with the result that you want.
4. I’d rather be hated for speaking up than loved for staying silent.
I was the ultimate people-pleaser when I was a child. For as long as I can remember, I have done things because I wanted people to like me. People getting mad at me causes absolute devastation. But in the past ten years, I have learned that there are some things worth speaking up for, even when it makes other people mad or uncomfortable.
If it is something that you genuinely believe in, it is worth saying something. You can have those challenging conversations in a respectful and healthy way. If people hate you for speaking up about something that you are passionate about, it is typically because they do not want to confront their own flaws. You cannot determine how people will respond to you, but you can breathe easy when you know that you spoke your truth, no matter the consequences.
5. Relationships change. It is painful but beautiful.
Pretty much every two years of the last decade, my friendships have changed significantly. It is a part of life at every age, but your twenties are the time when it happens frequently, and it is a bit more noticeable. At first, it was really hard for me. I felt abandoned.
In most cases, the change in relationship dynamics happened when one of my friends got married. I know that these changes affected my friends too, but it often felt like they replaced me with a spouse, but I never had anyone else to fill that void in my life. Every two or so years, I had to intentionally try to find new friends who could spend time with me when my married friends couldn’t while trying to maintain those old friendships at the same time.
I will not pretend that those times weren’t difficult. But now I am beginning to see those friendships come full-circle. We have had ebbs and flows in our friendship, but they are still involved in my life. Just because the relationship changed does not mean that it ended.
I have some friends that I grew closer to when they moved away. I have other friends who have been different things to me at different times. Sometimes they are my mentor, sometimes they are my sounding board, and other times they are my prayer partners. On the other hand, people that I have not talked to in years have reconnected and shown me love in just the right way at the right time.
I am not the same person that I was when those friendships started, and neither are my friends. Personal growth does not happen at the same rate, so sometimes one friend outgrows the relationship faster than another. But the truth is that those relationships need to change to adjust for the changes in your personality.
As beautiful as those friendships were when they were at their best, they would not work for me today because I have changed. The ups and downs of relationships are always difficult, especially when you are single, but without them, you would not get to experience the depth of friendships that have different purposes for different times in your life. It is okay to grieve when you feel a loss, but remember that there is hope and that this experience is normal. Give yourself, and your friends, permission to grow, even when it affects your relationship.
Resolutions
I am excited to start this next decade. I have some ideas about what I think the future will hold, but I am also excited about the unexpected. I hope that God surprises me with opportunities and experiences that I never saw coming. I cannot wait to grow and learn in new ways. I do not want to remain stagnant, but I know that growth is often painful. I am excited about that process anyway.
As far as resolutions go, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I generally do not wait until the new year to start something that I want to work on. I set goals for myself every month, and I adjust them along the way as needed. However, I do think it is good to set an overarching intention about what you want to accomplish.
In 2019, my only resolution was to be happy. At the time, my mental health was not good, and I was struggling to make it from one day to the next. For the next few months, I focused on celebrating happiness whenever I had a chance to. I focused on things that made me happy as best as I could at that moment.
But I knew I needed a change as well. Quitting teaching was a difficult decision, but I knew that I needed to do whatever was necessary to get my joy back. Hopefully, when my mental health is in a better place, I can go back to teaching in the future. But for now, I am celebrating the fact that being a writer makes me happy. So, I accomplished my 2019 resolution, even though it took some time and a significant life change.
Give yourself grace if you did not accomplish everything that you wanted to in 2019. If your resolutions faded by the end of January, reflect on how you can make a sustainable resolution this year. If life got in the way, let it be and move forward.
My main resolution for 2020 is to be more environmentally responsible. I already do some things to take care of the environment, but we can all do better. That is an intention that I can focus on all year long. I will continue making other goals whenever I feel like it, but I am thankful for the opportunity to reflect.
New Year’s is like a built-in self-reflection tool. It gives you a reminder to think about how you have changed in the past year, and how you want to change going forward. Do not beat yourself up over resolutions that you cannot keep. Instead, use that as a guide to help you set better intentions in the future.
No matter what the last decade has been like for you, I hope that you have grown and changed. I hope that you have been happy. And I hope the same will continue in the 2020s. Happy New Year!
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