29 Life Lessons I have learned In 29 Years

Thank you for clicking on this post! Firstly, pheww I finally managed to complete the write-up (yaaayyy). Secondly, I know I have been so laid back with my blog posts which I have decided to be more consistent going forward (tiny tiny promisesss).

So anyway, last month I celebrated my 29th birthday! It was one hectic week, but definitely a memorable one. I have contemplated on writing and posting this post on my blog for the longest time ever, but eventually I thought it would be fun to share my thoughts and life lessons I’ve learned over the past 29 years (in no particular order). And no, these are not the only life lessons but these are the ones that stood out the most. Here you gooo;

1. Being kind to myself first. You will never let your friend have negative self-sabotaging thoughts for themselves, then why would you do that to yourself. If you are the friend who is always kind and cheer everyone up, be that for yourself too. It can be extremely difficult to create the life you want for yourself if you constantly think of the setbacks in your mind.

2. Prioritize myself. Easy said than done. Took me some time to master this skill. Remember it is okay to stay-in and have your “me-time” or even push the plans around to accommodate your workout, beauty appointments, side hustle, business, studies and everything. Everyone does that, you can too. You don’t always have to be a people pleaser. I was once a person who would cancel my personal plans and show up for people whom I no longer talk to. HAHA. I am glad it is different now.

3. Learning to let go of people who aren’t happy for me. I always had trouble having people who are genuinely happy for my achievement. There was always a hint of jealously and unhealthy competition that came along simply because they were not happy about their lives. Took me a long time to finally realize that these are not the people I want to bring along on my journey and… that is okay… remember quality over quantity. Let them go.

4. Learning to protect my energy. I can’t stress this enough. Learn how to disconnect when you sense negative energy and intentions. Those who know me well will notice when I get withdrawn from a conversation with a particular individual. You don’t have to immediately cut the person out and end the conversation. Just learn how to navigate through and block your mind from absorbing and being swept away by the negative intensity. Most of the time our thoughts and moods don’t belong to us, we’ve just picked them up from others.

5. Spend time alone and get to know yourself. You don’t need to travel and live abroad alone to know yourself. You can just find or create alone moments and be by yourself. We live in a space where most people just copy paste an influencer or a close friend’s life onto theirs and then wonder why is it not making sense. Duhh… Don’t start something simply because it is working out for the other person. If it truly resonates with you then why not, but if you are just copy-pasting, you are losing yourself.

6. Investing in myself. Ahh, straight out of motivational book, isn’t it? But I finally understood the meaning…no this does not mean get the most expensive makeup, bag, skincare or branded clothes. That’s a whole different point. Invest in you… your mind, body and soul. Often, there is very little from our pay check that is invested for these. If you have the capacity, signup up for gym, yoga, Muay Thai, dance, short educational courses, self-improvement class, learn a new skill, even go for therapy if needed. This will help you in the long run more than your Sephora run.

7. Don’t try to save or change others. As much as we want our closed ones to be happy and protected, at the end it’s their choice. We cannot force them to do something that they aren’t ready and open for. They have their own growing and learning curve and we just have to learn to let them be. Constant effort to save and change them will only ruin our relationship with them.

8. Have a timeline for your goal. Controversial point. But hear me out, say you are travelling and you have a hotel booked, you would plan ahead and set a departure time to make sure you reach on time for the check-in so you could make the most out of the money you have paid for this trip. Now similarly in life, if you mindlessly work towards a goal without any concrete timeline or milestone, you are going to lose your motivation mid-way because you are not seeing the outcome or progress of your efforts. Set a timeline, milestones, end goal and then further list out all the efforts in details that will be required for you to achieve the goal. Now before you counter argue this point, check out the point below.

9. Normalize speaking about failures and failing itself. Do you have a circle with whom you can casually speak of your failures or unachieved goals? Not really, right. Often, we ourselves are not okay to speak about failures, we have made it something so personal, so self-defining that sharing it even with closed ones may seem as a image shattering moment. Trust me it’s not. The right circle will help you see what went wrong and nudge you the right way. Try speaking of failures as positively as you would of your achievement (without looking and sounding crazy of-course). Often when we achieve something we are able to recognize the one good thing that made it happen, but when we fail instead of recognizing what went wrong…we just self-sabotage ourselves. We are normal human beings, failure is normal… chill.

10. Dream, Imagine, Plan (DIP) for your future life. Dream the life you want. Imagine the life you want. Plan the life you want. Put in all the effort and time it requires and enjoy the outcome. For where I come from, the life I have had so far was simply an impossible dream seen by a young girl. Each day I dream and imagined how my life will be for me, from education, career, investment and etc. I remember having newspaper cut out of top universities and firms I would put in my all to study and work at. I made it happen.

11. Being mindful and present in the moment. If there is one thing you could take away from here, then it definitely has to be this one. This is the missing key to all our problems. There is no crash course to being mindful. When you are in a moment, actually be there. For instance, when you are working on preparing a report, just get your mind to focus on that one thing and all it takes to complete it. Have you ever heard of mind diarrhea? I would say it’s the time where tons of unwanted chain of thoughts that comes in your mind especially when you are trying to focus… and just like the after effects of actual diarrhea, mind diarrhea will leave our mind tired and fatigued.

12. It’s okay to take calculated risk. I would be as real as I can. Unlike many, I am not in a position to take mindless risk in life. Hence, when I do take one, you bet I have explored every potential pro and cons. From what I have observed, people often refrain from taking such risk not due to limited information they have but due to the failures of others which they have seen or heard of. I was one of them at some point. But as long as the risk is within your means (an accountant would say “risk appetite”…haha) and you have thought through well… Go for it!

13. Spend time with your family, being YOU. I do understand and acknowledge that not everyone has a great relationship with their family, that is okay. But life is so unpredictable. Our clock is ticking and do not know who is next. That thought really aches our heart. So while it last, cherish and spend as much time as you can with your family, be it your parents, grandparents even relatives. We often take them for granted. We ourselves have created a shield that our family will never understand us and we just let the distant feeling slip in-between. But…oh, they will… for sure… so spend time with your family as much as you can and if anything it will make you feel more connected with your family.

14. It’s okay to not compromise. I know that this can be a very…very…veryyyy tricky and sensitive topic for many people, but I don’t believe in immediate compromises. They leave both parties feeling miserable. Perhaps not at first but after some time it pushes others away, and it makes you feel demotivated and numb. Just think about it; when you always compromise what you want it leaves you drained and a bit empty. You lose a bit of yourself. The compromise doesn’t make you happy so you cannot be nice and happy to the other party that has wanted you to compromise. Be okay to share your actual feelings about compromising, if your heart says no, just don’t.

15. Define your own SUCCESS. The definition of success is different for everyone. The society has painted a picture of success which looks something like this; good grades, attend excellent university, find a full-time six figure income job, start a business, own a huge house, luxury car and the list goes on. If you believe in that too then it is perfectly fine. But if that isn’t what success look like for you then it is ALSO PERFECTLY FINE. Honestly, define your own success and do not impose that on others. For most of us, waking up happy and surrounded by loved ones carries greater meaning.

16. Keeping tabs on your credit score. Our education system doesn’t prepare us for this. I would consider myself lucky as I had the right people around me to educate and share their experience with me on this. But these days, all the information is just one search button away. Familiarize yourself with credit score. Get the full detailed report on your credit score from time to time and as much as you can, work on improving it. Trust me it will come in-handy when you’re chasing your dream investment. Also, just know it’s ok to not have a perfect credit score, it is not the end of it! It is in your hands to improve it. Just do not let it consume you. For Malaysian, you could refer to the following link to check your credit score.

17. Respect is earned. Logically, respect is such an intrinsic gesture that it is almost impossible to weigh it. However, it is good to remind yourself that there is no inherent respect that comes with your degree/masters/PhD, career position, business, money and even your age. Respect is as simple as debits and credits on your trial balance. You are always looking for balance and if you don’t treat others with respect, you will lose theirs.

18. It’s never too late to start. For the longest time ever, I have stopped myself from pursuing things I really wanted, simply because I thought the ship has sailed for me. I was intimidated to even start Blogging, something which I was truly passionate since I was 9yrs old. But then look across, everyone is trying to do their best each day, we are never too old…if anything we are much wiser.

19. Learn how to put your phone down. We are always busy capturing moments on our phones, well it can be good but it can kill the authentic moment as well. For me, I have detached myself from my phone so much so that when I am at a social gathering, I just refrain from taking out my phone and just live more in the moment. Maybe, one group picture towards the end will capture the moment enough. It’s not necessary to record every little thing.

20. Keeping your private moments…PRIVATE. Learning how to keep things private is the biggest flex these days. Not everything needs to be shared on social media. Many of us treat social media as a compulsory check-in for all the private moments you are having with your loved ones. Like don’t we ever wonder, what is the actual purpose of sharing a very personal moment on social media? It took me some time to realize that not everything needs to be on social media and that was the best decision ever.

21. Learning to not react. I have had fair share of anger management issue in the past. I was so easily triggered. But not anymore, I have simply mastered the skill to not react to certain people and situations anymore. I guess it’s just the age doing it’s thing. It may seem like I am giving in, but it simply means I am not pouring my energy into these anymore. It does take time to reach to that point, but once you do, your mental health will thank you.

22. Force yourself to be uncomfortable. That’s literally where your growth comes from. If you start to feel yourself feeling uncomfortable, push forward. Smile to yourself and know that you’re literally watching yourself become a better person.

23. Focusing on spiritual growth. This may not be the same for everyone. But to me, spiritual awareness keeps my anxiety in check. It is something which I try to be more consistent despite my busy schedule and it has certainly worked wonders for me.

24. Read as much as you can. A quote to take away would be “a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, the man who never reads live only once”. You don’t have to read and adapt to every single thing stated in the book, just try to imagine yourself in the authors shoes to understand the message that is being conveyed. Imagination can really transport you to places. Books are able to change the way you communicate.

25. Podcasts are game-changing. Being a classic reader, it took me a while to adapt to podcasts. But now I am equally addicted to it. Be it finance, relationship, personal growth or even career related there is so many different version of opinions and ideas on the same topic, it really helps you to see a different perspective. But remember take away ideas that resonates with you and ignore the ones that doesn’t.

26. Celebrate. Start celebrating. Milestones. Goals. Festivals. Birthdays. This will only give you the dopamine to keep going forward in life! Otherwise, it would be just another day. Simple as that.

27. Physical health is top priority now. Yesss… as I age, “health is wealth” is starting to make more and more sense. More context on this in my next blog post, stay tuned.

28. Focus on healing. Trauma will only follow me if I want it to follow. Hence, instead of speaking and thinking of the incident, I choose to focus on healing and healing only. We are all traumatised in one way or another…but how long do we choose to hold on to it?  We often start defining ourselves based on our trauma and that’s just not it. At the end of it, it’s all in our control.

29. Learning to laugh at my problems. Honestly, think back of all the problems you had in past years. It’s probably solved now and you probably don’t even remember it anymore. Being stress didn’t get me anywhere anyway, so now when I have a problem, I laugh at how I got myself there in the first place and calmly think of ways to get me out of it. Food for thought (if you have watched FRIENDS or any series); those characters faced so many problems in their daily life and we as third person laughed at those problems. Just try looking at problems as how we watch our series. Life changing.

That was something! Haha, thank you for reading and leave a comment below to let me know if any of these resonated with you. See you in my next blog post.