On my birthday this year, I’d like to gift you with 32 lessons I’ve learned, now that I’m entering my 32nd rotation around the sun.
In these moments of loving presence and nostalgic lucidity, I dive through the memories and experiences I have gone through in this first trimester of my human life to procure some gems. They may be novel to you or perhaps a reminder of something you already knew.
I hope they may encourage you to live your life in loving presence and to be the most authentic version of you that you can be.
- It’s okay to make mistakes.
Life is about learning. The desire for perfection is keeping you from building momentum. So take action in your life, knowing that you may make some mistakes but you will learn from them and make better choices. The road to mastery is not getting it ‘right’ but learning not to get it ‘wrong’. - Practice extending grace and forgiveness.
On the topic of making mistakes, you will make them and other people will make them. Extend grace and forgiveness towards yourself and others in these moments. Remember that everyone is doing the best they can with what they have. It does not mean you have to take abuse or mistreatment. But it does mean that you must learn to forgive, let go and set boundaries. - Become more conscious of the thoughts you are thinking & the beliefs you have.
Your thoughts and beliefs create the very life and reality you life. Be conscious of what you are thinking and what you believe: about yourself, about others, about the world. If you do not like them, substitute with better thoughts/beliefs. Read Plato’s “Allegory of The Cave”. - Appreciate something everyday.
It is natural for humans to constantly desire more. On this journey of wanting more, remember to cultivate gratitude for what already is. - Carve out time & space to have a ritual for connecting to yourself.
As you wish to give more of yourself to the world, it is increasingly important to remain grounded and centered within yourself so that you may have a full cup to pour from. Prioritize moments in your day where you can sit down, uninterrupted and engage in a ritual of your choice. Meditation, movement, journaling…anything that connects you to your heart and soul so you may be reminded of your purpose. - Give yourself the permission to change.
You do not have to be the same person you were yesterday or even an hour before. Give yourself the permission to be whoever you want to be. To change your mind, opinions and thoughts. To change the path that your life is going. - Make the decisions & choices that make you the happiest, even if it doesn’t make sense.
The best choices are the ones that are heart and soul aligned. So make more choices that move you towards the things that light you up. And not because of some sort of obligation or feeling like you need to meet anyone else’s standards of living. - Spend time doing nothing.
Your worth is not based off of your productivity as much as the modern world likes to believe. Make sure you have time to idle. To stare out the window, at a nice view, into the sky, to ponder, to day dream, to be with you. - Flow through life on your own timeline.
Do not move through life off of someone else’s anxiety-driven timeline. Move at the pace at which feels natural to you. If you feel rushed, it may be fear influencing and guiding you instead of your spirit. - Make faster decisions.
To become an effective leader in your life and connected to your intuition, trust your first instinct. Making faster decisions and choices helps with decision-paralysis, feeling stagnant and eliminates wasting time. Give yourself a timeline. Make the best decision you can with the information you have and then make it the right decision. Know that you can always course correct later if needed. - Don’t save that outfit/thing/experience for a special occasion.
Wear that thing that makes you happy, even if it means that you’re just going to the grocery store. Don’t wait for a ‘special occasion’. You are alive. That is special enough. - Practice showing up as your Truest Self (even if it might shock/confuse other people’s stories of you).
As you get more centered in your natural energetic frequency, show up in spaces as your Truest Self, even if it means it may contradict the stories that people have created of you. Learn to unapologetically shine as you. - Set and express your boundaries when you realize them.
You may not realize you have a boundary on something until you reach that threshold. Communicate it to people who are affected by this boundary. It may seem scary to express this if you have a history of setting aside your own needs. - Say the thing you’re scared to say.
Honesty sets the soul free. So say the thing you’re scared to say because you’re afraid of hurting someone’s feelings, disappointing someone or even being vulnerable. - “The universe is a raindrop of a butterfly wing” (nothing is as serious as it seems).
At the end of the day, life and its moments are ephemeral. Leave it be. Let it go. Nothing is as serious as it seems. - Take the risk.
There will be moments where it seems scary to jump. But it is an opportunity. So take the risk. It will make you more resilient. - Moisturize your skin & use sunscreen.
Take care of yourself as early as you can. Moisturize. Use sunscreen. Drink water. Eat a well-balanced diet. Preventative care is the way to go. - De-clutter and let go periodically.
This goes for physical and non physical items. Let go of items that no longer serve the version that you are growing into. Same for beliefs and thoughts. - Take action on an idea as quickly as possible.
Once you get an idea, start getting the process going. Write things down. Brainstorm. Start the blueprint and foundation. Flesh it out. Take it as far as the momentum will carry you. And from there, see what happens. Detach from outcomes but take action on your idea as soon as you can. Procrastination is the biggest challenge a creative can have on actualizing their ideas. - Seek first your own opinion and approval.
It’s great to have a mastermind group of people in your life that you trust. But they will not understand you or your vision as well as you can. So first, get clarity on your own opinion and approval before you seek to listen to outside voices. Sometimes, it may cloud your judgement. - Dream bigger.
You think the idea you have is big enough. But dare to dream bigger. To believe in the impossible. Life is full of surprises and you may soon see that your biggest dreams can easily come true. - Trust yourself.
You hold yourself back because you are scared. So trust yourself that whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it well and right. And you’ll figure it out. And you’ll do better as you go along. So trust yourself that you can do whatever it is you set your mind to. - Ask for help when you need it.
As much as we’d like to think we are independent and isolated, the world is built off of cooperation. Look at nature and the way everything is interdependent. Yes, each living thing has its unique purpose, skills and objectives in life. But in an expanded view, everything relies on everything to keep this beautiful world going. So ask for help when you need it. You might get a few ‘nos’ but you’ll eventually get your ‘yes’. - Respond not react.
Delay your reaction time so you may have a chance to respond. Most of the time, we are conditioned to a certain pattern in operation. You know those moments you think about ‘what if I could’ve said X’ or ‘what if I could’ve done Y’? Give yourself some buffer time so you may respond in the way you need to, instead of reacting on autopilot. - Time heals everything.
Things happen in this life. We lose. We experience grief and loss. We experience moments where we are hurt. Time will heal everything, as cliche as that seems. Those moments will be a drop in time and you will feel its pain less and less. - Being alone is better than being in relationships with the wrong people.
Sometimes you end up in the wrong crowd. Or with people who don’t respect/love/appreciate you. Being alone so that you may learn to respect, love and appreciate yourself is better than being in a relationship with others where you don’t feel that being reciprocated. This creates space for the right people to come into your life. - Walk away at the first sign of disrespect.
Speaking of disrespect, other people’s treatment and reaction to you is more about their relationship to themselves. So firstly, don’t take personal offense. And secondly, you do not need to subject yourself to suffer with them. So do yourself a favor, respect yourself and learn to walk away from things that do not serve you, your soul or your purpose. Know that you are valued elsewhere. Water is more valuable than diamonds in the desert. - Expand your everything (music tastes, palate, network, mind, perspective).
It is easy to become caught up in your personal preferences. Appreciate the contrast in life. Listen to something you may not have listened to before. Try a food you haven’t. Talk to people that are different from you. Be open to thoughts and ideas that may seem different than yours. - Have some sort of creative outlet.
I hear so much of this from my friends where they have these self-limiting beliefs of “I’m just not creative” or “I’m not good at art”. Creativity is not limited to creating art. Some people enjoy working on automobiles or pursing their own special interests. It doesn’t matter what it is. You need an activity or an outlet that allows you, your mind and your ideas to flow unencumbered. Do not worry about ‘being good’. It is just about ‘doing’. Like you are a child playing again. A child doesn’t worry about how good it is. They’re just having fun doing it. - Don’t miss the moment.
I see this a lot. Most people miss the moment. I know I have, in the past. Sitting at a dinner table with people I love, being able to talk about everything and anything. Those moments become more precious now as our schedules are so different from each others’. So…don’t miss the moment that you are in and the people you are with. - Bring your awareness to NOW.
In not missing the moment, realize where you are now. Recognize that you are alive, healthy, breathing. You are safe. You are loved. And you are here. And that is the best place to be. - Find something to be happy about and something to look forward to.
Life will come with its own challenges. So find something (anything) to be happy about. And make sure you have something to look forward to. It will make those dark moments seem much brighter. And it may take you out of a tough place.
I don’t have all the answers. I’m not even sure I have some of them. But what I do have is experience. And that experience has taught me a lot.
When I look in the mirror, I see my youth and vitality. When I sit in meditation, I encounter that eternal infinite energy that is my soul. And when I sit with myself and my thoughts, I feel like an old soul.
Even though the future is uncertain, I don’t fear getting old. It’s daunting not being able to picture what my life will be like in 1 year, 5 years or even 10 years. I’m creating quite an unconventional path and I’m certain there are still so many wonderful things to be experienced as these moments go on.
Death is permanent and a certainty. So what we do in between is what matters.
So some questions that I find myself thinking often are:
- What do I want in my life?
- What makes me truly happy?
My goals are no longer extrinsic. They cannot be measured by standard qualifiers of success. There are no metrics in which my definition of success can be explained. And that confuses a lot of people. It even confuses me sometimes. Because intrinsic goals have no real marker. Only you will know if you’ve met them.
So for my birthday, I wish for my continuous growth on this journey, for my heart to remain open and my soul to soften. I wish for the freedom and happiness of all beings. A phrase popped into my head the other day: The Incredible Lightness of Being. I found out there’s a book titled “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, but why should levity be unbearable?
So perhaps that is my ethos of my 32nd year: to experience and live the incredible lightness of being.
I have not reached any of the ‘goals’ my younger self thought I would have: get married, have kids, buy a house, be financially stable.
If anything, I am currently the antithesis of what she thought I would be: a creative artist and writer with scant savings but a clarity and presence in life. It is a risky life but what else can I do? Anything else would be a disservice to my heart and soul. And thus, I continue on this journey, strengthened by a talk I had with a friend the other day, who told the story of how it had taken nine years of pursuing photography as a passion before a breakthrough.
I do not have nine years to waste. I am impatient. So I wish for the fruitfulness of the seeds I have sown to bloom expeditiously.
Thank you for taking time out of your day to visit this post. I love you.
XO,
Jules
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