I'm 23 in less than 2 months, only 1/3 of my 20s. I might change my mind once I turn 33, but oh well, here's what I've learned so far.
1. It's all about balance
Homeostasis is one of the earliest lessons we got in our first year of medschool. Too much of anything is dangerous, yet the term less is more doesn't apply when it comes to the amount of iron in our body, the insulin produced by the beta cells, the ATP generated by the mitochondria, you name it. Same goes our life. Here's an example, healthy eating is good, but once you become too much of a healthy eater that you refuse to eat anything other than what goes in your dietary codes, or you begin to ridicule your friends for eating junk, or not wanting to eat out with loved ones at a restaurant that serves meat (this actually happens), you lose your ability to adapt with your surroundings, and for the opposite case I don't even need to explain what a habit of unhealthy eating could do to a person. Think about it, loving someone too much or too less, wanting something so bad or not wanting anything at all, caring for something too deeply vs being careless, trusting too much vs having trust issues, toxic productivity vs staying in a rut, the list goes on. Most things are a spectrum and therefore, we can strive for balance.
2. A lot of us don't know who we are
I'm well aware that we are in control of who we are and cultivating ourselves is a lifelong journey, but the case is we don't spend enough time talking to ourselves to understand our own emotions, preferences, and what truly matters. Here are simple questions for you to ponder, when does your energy peak the most throughout the day? What are your priorities? Are you happy with where you are now? If you find it difficult to answer these questions, perhaps you haven't been paying enough attention to your truest self. Sometimes, you can think of yourself a certain way, but once you sit down and really think about your past experiences and where you currently stand, you realise you're not the way you thought you were. For me this realisation came when I had a career consulting session with a psychologist. She asked me "what is the one thing you're not willing to sacrifice?" and after a lot of thinking, my answer was so far fetched from what I initially thought would be my definite answer. Another instance was when I came to see, as someone who spent a large portion of her coming of age partaking in story telling competitions, I thought I was a natural born performer, but now I know I don't really care for the attention, I actually enjoy being an audience. So whoever is reading this, please spend more time listening to yourself, you deserve it.
3. Trial and error, no shortcut
This lesson came to light during the past 4 years of me dwelling in the world of so called "self improvement". I've tried a lot of methods in enforcing better habits, there is an abundant source of learning, just type in how to have better habits in youtube and voila, you wouldn't have the time to watch all of the video that pops up. You can take inspiration from anywhere, but most likely you're not gonna succeed in the first try. You'll try and try and try, go back to attempt 1, then mix method 2 and 3, oops you pause cause life happens and you sorta forgot all about bettering yourself, then you remember and go back to step 1. After a while you look back and realise that you've made your own set of rules from lessons you encountered from multiple sources mixed with your own personal experience. Remember that the errors aren't a waste of time, it's a step closer to finding what works for you. Self regulation is tailor made after all.
Let's see what I think of this post by the end of my 20s. Bye folks.
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