20 lessons i’ve learned in 20 years

i’ve learned a lot of lessons in 20 years…

In five days, I will celebrate my 20th birthday. In honor of the start of a new decade of my life, I have done a lot of reflecting. I have learned many lessons and grown a great deal in my 20 years on this earth and I want to share my favorite lessons with you all today. This post means everything to me and it basically entails my entire outlook on life in one post. I hope you enjoy.

Lesson #1 Everything happens for a reason

I placed this first purposefully. This concept has been my life motto since I can remember. It has helped me through every struggle I have gone through in this life. From mundane inconveniences to life-changing tragedies. Whenever something doesn’t go how I had hoped I remind myself that there is something better and it will all pan out how it is meant to. In reflection, I can come up with a good reason why everything bad that has ever happened to me needed to happen to me.

Lesson #2 Gratitude

This concept has changed my life. From letting one minor inconvenience change my perception of the day, to finding the silver linings in every situation. From constantly complaining to appreciating all that I do have. The truth is no matter what is going on in life there are always so many beautiful things to be grateful for.

Lesson #3 It’s not that serious

I have a smiley face tattoo on my middle finger that represents this to me. It’s a reminder that we are on this earth ONCE, experience it all, make mistakes and love hard, it doesn’t have to be that serious. And honestly, this can be hard for me sometimes because I am such a type A, everything needs to be perfect kind of person. But when I can remind myself of this, that is when I am truly living.

Lesson #4 People always leave-and that’s okay

This one is a hard pill to swallow sometimes. I’m not saying that no one stays but odds are the people in your life will change, often. This is something that I’ve become super comfortable with. Of course, I still miss people, but I can look back and appreciate the time and memories we have together. Life is constantly changing, everything is constantly moving, and we are all going in different directions. You are going to meet SO MANY more people in this life. It is okay if not everyone stays around for the long haul.

Lesson #5 Date to see if u like THEM

This is a sort of random thrown-in here piece of advice, but I saw this one day and I love it. As a whole, we need to care less about what people think of us. I truly have a deep sense of self-love, but I know that I am not for everyone. When you are doing anything, but especially when dating it is important to remember you are not trying to impress them or make them like you. You are trying to see if THEY are someone YOU want to continue to see. Don’t waste your time and energy trying to make someone like YOU, when you haven’t even considered if you like THEM. Be yourself and just feel out the vibe.

Lesson #6 Take time for yourself

I don’t know if this is just me or my fellow introverts, but I know I definitely recharge alone. I am super outgoing and I LOVE spending time with people I love. However, I NEED alone time. And honestly, we all do. Don’t forget to take a step back and take care of yourself.

Lesson #7 Leave your hometown

I seriously could not imagine my life if I never left my hometown. I know for a fact I would not have experienced the growth that I have if I had still been there. Now it doesn’t have to be for college, but I think it is important to change your environment. It not only allows for endless personal growth, but it allows you to redefine yourself in a new environment.

Lesson #8 Emotions are one of the coolest parts of life

Throughout high school, I think I got a little too caught up in the vampire diaries concept of “flipping the switch”- if you’re not familiar with this concept, basically they can turn their emotions off in the show. Now silly little me thought “oh I can totally do this too”… I was an idiot. I was so scared of getting hurt and loving people more than they loved me that I convinced myself I didn’t care. I literally manipulated myself into thinking I had no emotions and that nothing bothered me, but this only led me down an awful path of literal misery. I wasn’t avoiding the bad emotions, I was just temporarily suppressing them. This just meant they were all going to come flooding in one day in the future… and they did.

Since being a 16-year-old IDIOT, I have learned to value my emotions. I have learned that it is better to feel and heal through them in the current moment rather than deal with them later. Recently, I went through a pretty rough breakup and thought to myself “isn’t it a beautiful thing that I have loved someone so much that it hurt this much to lose them”. This was a very full circle moment for me, I didn’t feel weak for being upset, I didn’t deny my emotions, I felt through them and actually even appreciated them.

Lesson #9 Romanticize your life.

This concept is unmeasurably important to me. It is what I credit a large deal of my happiness to. Romanticize waking up early, romanticize sleeping in, and taking care of yourself. Romanticize a healthy meal, romanticize a “cheat meal”. Whatever it is you choose to do make it “fun”. When everything in life is “fun” life feels more worth living. I always say that I am “passionate about life”, I believe this is because I romanticize everything. You can even romanticize a breakup, eat your gallon of ice cream, scream that sad music, and cry your eyes out, that is still beautiful. Life is beautiful. Each and every part of it. Romanticize it all.

Lesson #10 Spend money on experiences

Something I talk about with my friends is that I want to experience everything on this earth. Every time I make an online order or buy something I may not need, I consider the fact that “I could’ve gone (here or there)” with the money I spent. I just know personally I would rather spend my money on skydiving in Switzerland or seeing my favorite artist in concert than a new wardrobe. Life is meant to be lived. Remember what will make you happiest and what you will grow the most from.

Lesson #11 You can be happy in any life

This is especially prevalent at this time of my life. What I mean when I say this is that no matter what path you choose to follow in life, you can make the most of it. As someone with maybe too many passions, it is easy to become stressed about what passion I should follow. If I choose one thing will I regret not trying another thing for the rest of my life? The truth is when you focus on what you have rather than what you don’t you will be happy with your choice. And if you are not you can and will change it.

There are so many life paths I’ve considered following and that is very stressful for an indecisive person like myself. But I have learned to remind myself that I am passionate about all of these things and all of them will make me happy. I will choose the right thing when the time comes. My point is to stop worrying so much about the future you will figure it out.

Lesson #12 There is time

Something I learned during my freshman year of college is that my perspective on time changes how much time I feel that I have to get things done. Now I recognize this sentence is confusing, so let me elaborate… There were weeks that I felt like I had so much work that I would absolutely not be able to finish until the very last minute, and that’s exactly what I did. One week though I decided to change my perspective, I told myself I had plenty of time to do my work ( I wasn’t procrastinating, I was still going to do my work at the same time). My workload didn’t change, but I finished so much sooner. I wasn’t acting in a mindset of a rush but rather a mindset of efficiency. I wasn’t so stressed about getting it done, I was calm and confident it would be finished.

Lesson #13 Be cringy

This is a lesson I’ve had to learn recently. At the end of the day, people are going to judge you, good and bad, and there is nothing you or I can do to stop being judged. Whether you take the risk or not they are going to judge you, so you might as well do it. In the last few years, I have really put myself out there. I have tried new things, things that some people may consider “cringy”. I am sure people have made fun of me behind my back but the truth is I don’t care. I would much rather be called cringy and get made fun of while following my dreams than get to the end of my life and regret not being true to myself and letting other people’s opinions rob me of the life I was meant to have.

Lesson #14 Failing is good

Honestly, growing up failing wasn’t a concept I was very familiar with. I was one of those kids who were, for the most part, good at everything. I did good in school, I was good at sports, I played a lot of instruments, and I had gotten on every team and every part I had ever tried out for. I wasn’t told “no” very often. Even in college applications, only one told me “no”.

This little daydream of mine that I experienced growing up is over now. All my life I was terrified of failure because I had never really felt that I had failed before. Now that I have failed more times than I can count, I have to say that failure is where I have learned the most. Like I said, I have put myself out there a lot in the last couple of years, and that has involved lots and lots of failure. Now, I am not afraid to fail, because I know I am one less failure away from my biggest success.

Lesson #15 Nurture your relationship with yourself

At the end of the day, YOU are the only person that is 100% going to be there for you. Your relationship with yourself is just as, if not more important than your relationship with other people. It’s important to start treating it like that.

Lesson #16 Gods grace & sins

Being a Christian in college, sometimes it is difficult to navigate right and wrong. Which is why I am so thankful for a God that is so gracious and forgiving. We all make mistakes and I believe that Jesus died on the cross so WE could be forgiven. I also believe that God isn’t trying to place restrictions on us when he tells us what sins are, but rather he is trying to help us. It’s not a matter of control but a matter of care. God is trying to guide us through life in the best way possible, but we don’t always listen. And my point is that is okay. We are not perfect and God doesn’t expect us to be.

Lesson #17 Change is good

Change=growth. Go outside of your comfort zone, try new things, live in different places, and immerse yourself in different cultures. Live your life. I wrote an entire research paper on the importance of going outside your comfort zone, so I can blabber on and on about this topic. However, to keep it short and sweet, growth occurs outside the bounds of your comfort zone, you can not truly live if you shelter yourself from the rest of the world.

Lesson #18 Celebrate the small wins

This kind of goes along with “romanticizing your life”. But always find a reason to celebrate. There is so much to be grateful for in this world and celebrating the small things is an easy and fun reminder of how beautiful life is.

Lesson #19 Your space is important, make it special

It is easy to miss how important our environment is to our overall happiness, productivity, and life. Having “two homes” has truly shown me the importance of the environment as well as the habits built around them. At school, I LOVE my room. Aesthetics are a BIG part of my life, if something I aesthetically pleasing to me, I am 1000% more likely to do it. For example, my desk set up where I do my work is very aesthetically pleasing to me, and this encourages me to actually want to do my work.

Not only does the aesthetic of my room bring me so much joy. But the habits I was able to build in this environment make me happier and more productive. Going back home (to LI) I find it so easy to fall into old habits that I thought I grew out of. Your environment triggers certain habits in you (read Atomic Habits if you want to learn more about this idea). Be intentional with your space.

Lesson #20 Worrying is a waste of time and so is regret

I have no regrets. Not a single one. There is not one thing I would do differently in this life if I had the chance. Every decision I have ever made has led me to this very moment, and I am grateful for this moment. Have bad things happened to me-of course, have I made mistakes-absolutely, with that being said I still wouldn’t change a thing. In order to fully appreciate the presence you must learn to accept the past. The worrying portion of this prompt is the one I struggle more with. But at the end of the day, we must remember that worrying about tomorrow will do absolutely nothing but ruin today. Don’t waste today.

If you made it this far… wow, I babbled on for quite a while. But I hope you enjoyed the last 20 years of my life summed up in 20 lessons.

-xoxo jenny <3