22 Lessons from 2019

As I turned 22 this year, here goes 22 lessons that 2019 taught me (In random order):

1. Love Yourself: You cannot love others if you don’t love yourself. This year I learnt to accept, embrace and love the way I am as much as possible. Don’t ever doubt on yourself, kill all your insecurities and live every moment loving and pampering yourself!
2. Love Others Immensely: After loving yourself, comes loving people around you be it your friends, family, peers, and even the most random people you meet on streets. Trust me, you will always get double the love back you give.
3. Don’t Hold on Grudges for Too Long: Anger is probably my biggest enemy which literally has ruined so many of my relationships. People always don’t act according to me and obviously that pisses me off at times, eventually me holding grudges forever. But honestly that led me nowhere. So, this year was all about anger management, letting go off and bearing maximum.
4. Forgive & Forget: Followed by the last point, comes this one. Forgiving people is still easy, but forgetting their mistakes is a challenge. Always give people a second chance and forget what they did to you. This might help you in future as its always not the other person who makes mistakes.
5. Lower the Expectations Higher the Satisfaction: This year was all about lower expectations and lesser disappointments. It was, and it will be more about delivering and less about expecting returns.
6. Don’t Cry Over People: Attachment is a human tendency, but the sad reality is that the more you are attached to people higher the chances they’ll end up hurting/leaving you! Trust me if I say this but nobody stays forever, except your family.
7. Don’t Judge People: “If you judge people, you have no time to love them” by Mother Teresa are words to swear by! We have no clue about what people are going through in their lives and the story behind why they are the way they are.
8. Make Friends Wisely: Friends are the family we choose, so this year I analyzed who my genuine friends, worked on my existing friendships, discarded toxic people and made friends who matched my wavelength.
9. Don’t Make Enemies: Spread zero hatred, don’t be a hater, try not to be hostile towards people you don’t like and leave positivity wherever you go.
10. Respect Other’s Opinion: You don’t grow and evolve by arguing with others, you grow and evolve by gaining new insights, opinions and perspectives. Respecting and appreciating other’s perspective will not prove you wrong.
11. Take Criticism Well: Constructive criticism helps us improve in areas we should. This year I tried to take criticism in a healthy manner, and rather than getting offensive, I gave a thought on why people felt so and what can I do to change their opinion. To grow and evolve as a person, it is important to accept mistakes, learn from them & rectify them.
12. Socialize & Network: I spent so much of my time this year networking and socializing with people from different genres and streams. Being a mass communication student, it really helps interacting with different people every day.
13. Procrastinate Less: I am big couch potato spending maximum time scrolling Instagram and Snapchat. Be it doing assignments, studying for my exams or writing blogs (which ideally, I enjoy doing), I have done everything right before the deadline. In 2020 I will not only to try to procrastinate less but get things done in advance.
14. Self-Introspect: It’s so important to give time to yourself, sit alone and do some introspection to analyze which path you should take ahead in life. “Me time” is extremely essential for self-development.
15. Maintain a Balance: This generation is going through major FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). Hence, it is important to maintain a balance between your personal and professional life. One should not get so lost in working that they forget to enjoy their lives because “you only live once”!
16. Give Yourself a Break: In the hustle-bustle of lives, we get so lost that we forget to give ourselves a “much needed break”. This year I ensured to give myself break, take small trips, skipped a few important tasks and gave myself a chill pill
17. Advocate for Yourself: In a world full of people who leave no chance to let you down, I strongly feel its important to have a voice of our own, take a stand for ourselves and not entertain anyone’s bullshit!
18. Read/Write: Reading and writing is one great habit, be it only on topics that interest us. I know our lifestyle does not allow us to stay focused to sit and read/write every day, but this one habit literally makes me feel 1000 times better and I don’t mind feeling this good on a regular basis.
19. Be Productive: At this point of my life, when I am on the peak of shaping my career, I feel just attending lectures, coming back home and submitting assignments is not being productive. Its much more than that. It’s about doing extra than your peers, working double hard, exploring opportunities and exploiting them before anyone else does.
20. Be Ambitious: Without a set ambition, there is no point of just working hard. It’s important to set bigger goals and work everyday to achieve them.
21. Stay Motivated: To get motivated after watching motivational videos is easy but remaining motivated and focused till the end is a challenge, which I wish to do now. Nothing great comes without compromise, and a little compromise now will give us better results in future.
22. Be Grateful: I started doing gratitude exercise at the beginning of the year and it changed my thought process tremendously. At the end of the day, it’s all about being thankful to god for the amazing life he has given us!

P.s: Every day I am making mistakes, learning, and evolving as a person and I could have gone on and on with the list. But these were some major lessons from this year. Would love to know your views on it, and what 2019 has taught you guys? 🙂

 

Much love,

Thank you for reading!