Every year you get a bit wiser, here are the big lessons from my past 25 years.

I read something online recently that was so inspiring. It talked about how when we turn older on a birthday, we are still all the ages before us.

When I turned 25 for example, I am still all the experiences and memories I had at 24, 14, 10 and so on. I truly feel I am all the ages before me, and every age taught me something important, so I thought I would take those lessons and share with you all.

Here are my 25 life lessons.

Other people's thoughts

As an Indian immigrant I have been brought up to think about the weight of other people's opinions and even though taking other people into consideration is a thoughtful and necessary process, it is not meant to stunt your growth. There are so many things I have wanted to do in this lifetime that I thought were impossible for me but I did them anyways. They have led to a lot of hardships and growing up faster than I would have liked but I would not change my decisions for anything.

So my advice is chase your wild ambitions because at the end of the day you are the one that has to live with them.

You're going to die

A cold hard truth that lets you remember what is really important. Whenever I have a life changing decision or a difficult choice to make I just think I will die one day, which choice is going to make me proud of the life I have lived. It's too short to be making your decisions for other people. It's also a wakeup call that even though we imagine ourselves to live to 100, but it's not promised so take that as a friendly reminder not a warning.

Work hard, rest hard

I did not realize the value of rest until I was tired, burnt out and wanting to die constantly. I value my rest now more than ever before. When I say rest, I mean actually resting, doing nothing , not caring about tomorrow or this week's to do list or managing a million things. I now plan days where I can do anything I want and sit on the couch the whole day if I want to. Learning how to rest was for some reason one of the most stressful things I had to learn but necessary for my health and well being.

Stay young

This sounds ridiculous but I don't mean you have to be 40 years old partying with 20 year olds. I mean mentally continue to try new things, it doesn't matter when your first time doing something is. You should never let your physical age holding you back from discovering new hobbies and things that you enjoy.

We hear so many stories of people who start weight lifting in their 60s or going back to school in their 70s. It is such a brave choice because sure there might be some people that look a little funny at you, but what about the majority of people in awe that you had the strength to do something for the first time again.

Healthy mind, body and soul

I hate exercising, I loathe it actually well until I figured out that you could actually enjoy exercise. You can also enjoy healthy eating, but for some reason I was brainwashed into thinking both were horrible sacrifices I had to make instead of another way to love and nourish myself. Taking care of yourself starts with your "whys." Why do you want to be more fit , more healthy , have better concentration? For me I think of having kids in the future and being able to keep up with them and experience things I will need my strength and energy for.

Baby Steps

My lovely friend and trainer Emily actually reminded me about this, such a simple concept yet is sometimes forgotten when we are trying to learn new things again. After the pandemic I had gained a bunch of weight and felt incredibly sluggish, weak and tired. Combined with the fact that I had a pretty bad accident and broke my arm back in 2020 I felt like I was a million years old and knew I needed to make a change.

I asked several people how they convinced themselves to make a change and continue to go to the gym and a common piece advice I heard was baby steps. Such a simple concept but it really is the beginning of a great new habit. If you're unsure of going to the gym don't even exercise, just walk there. Once you have walked there consistently tell yourself you're going to spend only 5 minutes on the treadmill then you can go home. Continue this pattern, show up and be consistent taking these baby steps and soon you'll find yourself doing full workouts.

Anxiety & Me

I have struggled with anxiety since University , previous to that I know struggled with depression. I will spare you the self depreciating jokes I make about my mental illnesses to cope with the fact I have to live with them and constantly fight an uphill battle and instead tell you why they are a superpower of mine.

Anxiety tells me that there is something I need to do that isn't being done. Whether that's a task or a direction in life, I find myself listening more to my body nowadays and my anxiety has led me to create good habits such as meditating and journaling. These combined with other self-care practices have allowed me to be more productive and happier than I have ever been. If it were not for my anxiety I don't think I would have been able to get as much done as I have. It definitely sucks somedays especially looking back at University when it was so crippling but this is definitely a topic I could delve into a lot further if y'all are interested.

Faking it

I have had people commend me for my confidence and ability to do things I want without thinking of what other people may think. If I am being frank I completely lost all of it during covid when I gained a bunch of weight and lost all of my social skills. I was a snivelling mess of a human and I knew something had to change. I started reading about confidence and people skills and so much more. Slowly it all started coming back to me and I started feeling like myself and the connecting factor was that no one knows what the hell they are doing. Confidence is simply putting on a character and sticking with it until it becomes who you are. On days I felt unattractive, old, frumpy or whatever negative thoughts I had latched on to that day, I would instead pick a character to play and act as them. Slowly but surely I was me again.

You'll never get it

For the longest time I had such difficulty verbalizing what I wanted. From the smallest things like doing store returns or communicating to my friends that I was uncomfortable. I made myself so small that even when I tried to communicate my needs no one could hear them. A lesson I had to learn was that if you don't ask for what you want you'll never get it. Whether it's a raise, more respect, support from your peers etc. The worst that happens is you take a detour to get to what you want but we need to remember that what we want is valid and we can get it, if we simply ask.

Go ask yourself

I touched on how journaling changed my relationship with anxiety but it's done so much more than help me cope and survive. Journaling allowed me to take a hard look at my feelings, opinions, perspectives and thoughts. By writing down my beliefs on things it helped me to continually help me change and grow. I didn't even realize how stuck in my ways I was until I start journaling. There are many ways to self reflect but this has been revolutionary for me because I started off thinking how useless writing my feelings down was but it helped me overcome so many limiting beliefs about what I can do and achieve in this lifetime.

Currently I do monthly reflections to make sure that I am keeping up with my goals and where I want to be in life. I highly recommend trying something like this out.

The need to read

I have always loved to read I started off getting addicted to reading when the Twilight series came out (the books were good, leave me alone). That branched off into vampire novels and fantasy novels and then later books on spirituality , religion, ethics, the science of beauty, self- help and so many other areas that interested me. I loved reading so much that I didn't even think about how beneficial it was for my brain and my long term ability to concentrate.

I wholeheartedly believe that anyone can enjoy reading once you find subjects that interest you. Reading is life changing, you learn about so many topics and open up your mind to different perspectives. Reading helped me with my healing journey and understanding the generational cycle of trauma and how to end it. I will definitely make a blog post of a list of life changing books I recommend so keep an eye out for that.

In(sim)nia

Did you see what I did with that heading, pretty clever I know. Anyways, I have had insomnia forever, I attribute a lot of my creative qualities to the fact that I can never sleep and the loopiness allows me to see things a bit differently. I realized in my 20s how this was one of my less qualities and how without sleep I will literally die faster. I went on this journey of better sleep habits and I even made a whole article on better sleeping. Definitely read that for more insights but long story short, I needed to learn to sleep better for my health and sanity and it was an eye opening lesson for sure.

What is an abundance mindset?

Good question, let's say you spend your early years constantly jealous of the happiness and success of others and wonder why it never comes to you. You compete with others over things that have no scarcity such as love, happiness, joy, money and career success. This is called a scarcity mindset, and it's detrimental to you because what you think is what you manifest. When you believe that there is enough happiness, love, success etc, for everyone then you manifest that. It puts you at ease and everything starts flowing into your life abundantly and effortlessly. This mindset is an abundant mindset and learning this will change the course of the rest of your life.

Comparison is the thief of joy

Literally exactly that, stop comparing yourself to becky's instagram. Your journey is uniquely yours and to say you're behind of anyone is to disrespect the path you were meant to be on in this life. Stop it.

Karma is my boyfriend

My mom Taylor Swift said it best. "Karma is a relaxing thought." People who do bad things, will get bad things. Revenge is for people who want to struggle to do the work that karma was already planning on doing. I have learned in these 25 years that karma absolutely loves me, people who have done me wrong end up exactly where they deserve to be and that has helped me sleep better at night. Karma is your best friend.

The best medicine

Get ready for the biggest cliché in this entire article. The best medicine is laughter, sunshine and fresh air. If you told me this in the midst of my dark depression I would have kicked you in the face. When I was on the verge of getting better and my partner would bring laughter into my life and take me for walks in the sunshine I realized that almost every cliché in our lives makes sense. So eat your vegetables, don't do drugs, stay in school (even constantly learning is symbolically school).

Fear is the enemy

You know when you're young and your running around doing dangerous things and your mom is about to have a heart attack? You don't understand her fear until you're older and suddenly afraid of everything yourself. We are conditioned to watch the news and absorb all the fears of the people around us and to some extent fear is a good thing. It keeps us from being killed at the very least. However, when fear takes over your life and you can't leave the house or travel to new countries or do something new for the first time, that's when fear has taken over your life. At some point we need to start thinking like kids again because what is meant to happen will happen and worrying will do nothing to stop it. Live your life without fear and anxiety.

Life is meant to be exciting

What if I told you that your life was meant to be full of wealth, happiness, unconditional love, unicorns, rainbows and everything else that your heart desires? Hopefully, you would probably be ecstatic and ready to receive it all. I am telling you that all of those things and more are meant for you if you allow them to be. I don't wanna elaborate on this too much but if you're not happy right now you need to make a change because life is meant to be exciting and wonderful. My recommendation for you is to read the book "The Secret" and then come back here.

Yin & Yang

You have heard this one before but it is different to know something than it is to understand it and I spent the last couple of years understanding that all aspects of life require balance. Every SINGLE aspect of your life requires balance, if you're not sure if something is good for you ask yourself how is this act balanced? When I was struggling with sleep I would oversleep to compensate for days I under slept and realized this was also bad for me. I would spend the whole day groggy because just like too little sleep is bad for you so is over sleeping. This seems simple enough but balance is like walking on a tightrope and the more you practice the better you get.

Aging is a privilege

Such a profound thought, when I first heard someone say this it was like a lightbulb went on in my head. I was so afraid of approaching 30 even when I was 20, I am now 25 and I realize how stupid that is. Not everyone lives to be 80, to see yourself age is such a privilege. Lines on your face show the stories you have lived, sun spots show the days you spent soaking up sun with your friends and family, grey hair shows the struggles and stress you have overcome. Aging is a fucking privilege, so stop being so afraid of growing old and be afraid of missing out because you thought you were too old.

Mom was right

Here's something you're not going to like, most of your problems are caused by your phone. Your constant need to compare yourself, your dry eyes, your brain fog, your doom scrolling, all byproducts of constantly being on your phone. 23 was the year I finally understood this and realized I needed to be more present. Treat your phone like candy, sure there's a dopamine rush from getting likes on your phone and from eating lots of sugar but eventually you will get sick. It should not be a constant thing you are doing but rather supplemental to a happy, balanced life.

Rejection is redirection

I am still learning this, I have cried over many rejection letters and emails not understanding that there's a reason for that rejection. If I had worked it out with my first boyfriend I would not be with the love of my life, if I had received that mundane secure job I would not be working a job that I love that compensates me fairly. Everything will work out once you realize that rejection is just redirection and I trust the god and the universe to send me what is meant for me.

Inner child healing & other corny shit

This is something I have picked up on my healing journey that I felt was incredibly important no matter how corny it comes across. There are things that we wanted as kids that we never got and there are traumas we faced that we never healed from or even understood. Now I realize at this point in my life that for adult me to be happy, child me needs to feel loved and heard. There are many ways to heal your inner child and to feed into their happiness. I love watching cartoons and nostalgic shows and youtube channels that feeds into my happiness but also looking at why I react to certain things abruptly or what happened to me as a child that made me the way I am, allows me to start that process. This is a very complex topic I could dissect a lot further as well.

Everything takes work

Your career, your finances, your relationship, your friendships, everything. Everything requires work and the sooner you realize this the happier you'll be. I think especially in terms of relationships people think your soulmate is just going to fall into your lap, but that's not how it works. I believe you pick your soulmate.

To spend your life searching for someone exactly like you is a waste of time, we all have different lived experiences and perspectives on life so inevitably it will require work to communicate and understand one another. Unlike your boring 9-5, this type of work is soul enriching and deeply satisfying because at the end of the day something wonderful comes out of it. The work you put into yourself is going to help you flourish in all aspects of life, the work you put into your relationship will leave you with a legendary love, the work you put into your friendships give you a shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen to all the wonderful things that will happen in your lifetime. Put in the work.

Last but not least

In true cliché fashion I will be leaving this one blank as I have only turned 25 I am sure I will learn many more things and this is me metaphorically leaving space for it. I hope y'all enjoyed reading or at the least learned something. Here's to many more birthdays and life lessons.

Love,

Simran