I have always loved using the term ‘whirlwind’ to describe my life. I feel it is truly the only word that encompasses what it feels like to be 25 and figuring things out. The constant ebbs and flows, the lifting ups and then falling downs. All of it.

The art of learning, listening and growing allows oneself to sit in the midst of this all and say “I accept myself completely here and now. I consciously experience everything I feel, think, say and do and accept it as a necessary part of my awakening” – this was beautifully put by a lady I found on Instagram, her words resonate deeply with me and captures the true essence of the life I want to live.

There have been many times I have stumbled upon some spectacular nuggets of wisdom, ranging from quotes in books, words of loved ones, videos on Instagram and so on. These nuggets have sat with me and helped me through some times of reflection – grounding me and guiding me through.

I would love to share them, in hopes that even one will be something you needed to hear today.

The lacking vs abundance mindset.

I listened to a podcast the other day with Tony Robbins talking about ways to change your life, as he does. He mentioned three things and one really stood out to me, he said, roughly put, “thoughts and happenings in our lives affect us based purely on the meaning we give to them”. Essentially we cannot control what happens to us, right? But, we can change the narrative from “why is this happening to me?” to “what is happening for me?”. Powerful.

This brings me to the lacking vs abundance mindset, in which I feel a lot of us are stuck in the former. We constantly work harder and try to achieve more because we feel like when we have that house, partner, car, flights booked – that we will feel whole. But placing a sense of completeness in the future, has to mean you are lacking something now.

Lacking. How interesting that we place our happiness in the next, more complete version of ourselves. I’m all for achieving more, wanting more – of course that brings us a sense of purpose, but focus on which mindset you are adopting to get yourself there. Don’t focus on what you don’t have, because if there is anything I have learnt, it’s that there will always be something lacking.

With the lacking mindset the happier future version of you will always be just that, a future version.

Abundance means, “I have everything I need to not only be happy right now, but to execute my purpose”.

It is already within you.

The art of letting go.

I watched an incredible video on this not too long ago. This man explained that often people struggle with the idea of letting things go, this could be absolutely anything – people, objects, ideas. People tend to believe that in order to let go, we need to forget, totally banish this thing from our lives forever. What a scary and almost impossible task.

The trick, he explained, was removing your attachment to this thing. Why are you struggling to let go? Does it make you feel sad, angry, full of grief, nervous, hurt? These are all feelings attached to this thing. Not the thing itself.

The answer? Feel them. Feel all these emotions as fully as you need, as messy as it is. Because there is no way past them, other than through them. And slowly, ever so slowly, your attachment gets less and less.

What is so beautiful about this process, is you do not actually have to forget or banish it from your mind completely, you still get to remember it, think of it, revisit it every so often. But you don’t feel that intensity anymore. You co-exist with these memories without the heavy feeling that essentially holds you back, that same heavy feeling that keeps you trapped in a cycle of holding on.

Letting go can be the most unsettling, uncomfortable and fear filled experience. As you are letting something go in the hopes that what’s to come is going to be better for you, it requires hope and a whole lot of faith. Having gone through this process in multiple aspects of my life, I have seen how absolutely necessary learning how to let go actually is.

I find in life we tend to forget all the ways in which we need to do this. What about all the versions of ourselves that we have outgrown? What about all the unlived lives we turned down, because by saying yes to something we are essentially saying no to many other things? What about that person you don’t speak to anymore? That friendship, relationship? All of it.

When we practice detachment, and allow letting go to be part of the process of growing up, we get to practice this skill day in and day out – allowing our lives to flow, in a constant acceptance of right now, but knowing to our core when something no longer serves us. And that being okay.

Not feeling like we are stuck in the past. Or future for that matter. Just right now.

The three unavoidable aspects of reality.

This is one of my favorites that I jotted down shortly after watching the Stutz documentary on Netflix. The documentary shows Jonah Hill candidly engaging in conversation with his therapist, Phil Stutz.

There are multiple takeaways from the documentary, and I would highly suggest giving it a watch. The one thing he spoke about really resonated with me though – something that I have felt very strongly about this past year after I have felt the true affects of being at my lowest. My life felt somewhat tainted by these feelings of doubt, sadness, grief, I guess the list could just go on. How could I be doing everything right, be beyond blessed with a life I feel I had always wanted, surrounded by incredible friends/family, and still feel this way?

I felt so disconnected to my reality and the frustration grew bigger every day, I just didn’t understand myself and what was happening.

As a child, you always look at those older than you in awe. In your eyes, they are a person sculpted by your assumptions that they have it all figured out, they’re happy. It’s like a graph showing the older you get being directly proportional to your happiness.

And here I find myself, at the ripe age of 25, shredded graph on the floor – facing reality.

Stutz describes them as the three unavoidable aspects of reality – Pain, Uncertainty and Constant Work. For me, this concept undoubtably changed my life. Understanding that no matter what you do, where you go, who you’re with, how old you are – you cannot avoid these. No matter how hard you try. Normalizing these as parts of life, embracing them whole-heartedly, makes you incredibly powerful.

A successful life is not defined by the lack of these, but by your ability to accept them.

It sometimes isn’t about finding someone you love, but becoming someone you love.

I’m not sure about you but growing up, it was easy to find myself wrapped up in the idea of finding love. The early onsets of the lacking mindset, if you ask me.

I do not doubt the power of love. I have been given the incredible honor of experiencing love in a multitude of forms throughout my life, and I cannot express in words the feeling. I do also believe that love is the true essence of a fulfilling life, in all shapes and forms – it is magical.

But when did we stop loving ourselves in an attempt to gain it from external sources? When did we neglect the act of providing ourselves the unconditional love we seek?

Creating a beautiful life is your responsibility.

Through the act of loving ourselves, we connect so deeply to our inner thoughts, feelings and yearnings. And as a result, we know what we want. We understand who we are, and crave sharing that with the world, unshaken by the opinions and actions of those who could not possibly know you better than you do yourself. You become so authentically you. So uniquely you. How special is that?

This is your purpose.

The purpose of life is to live a life of purpose.

This incredible quote is from The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma. 10/10 would recommend this book for anyone wanting to gain some amazingly noteworthy perspectives on life.

For the past few months, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of life. What it all means, what do we do with this one life, coming to terms with how fast life moves and really sitting with the concepts of having one chance and never getting this time back. It was scary and exhilarating all at once.

There was a saying I heard, “You can’t give your life more time, so give the time you have left more life”.

It is so easy to get caught up in the “supposed to” culture of life. Getting that job, the partner, settling down, saving money – all of these are incredible in their own ways and wouldn’t be seen as societal norms if they didn’t, in some way, provide people, throughout history, with beautiful, fulfilling lives.

Although, if you think about it, how often do you base your level of fulfillment off of this standard? Is anything outside of that not seen as fulfilling? Or commendable?

Finding your purpose, I believe, is something that has no start nor end though, it is fluid. A dance of sorts. Ebbing and flowing, evolving through time. And is uniquely your own. Maybe that’s what scares us most, not having a definite end to assess our level of achievement.

Purpose is driven by our values, and good values are those that are process-oriented – meaning it is a metric that is never completely finished/achieved. This is seen when Mark Manson in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck used Pablo Picasso as an example, had his purpose in life been to become famous, make a certain amount of paintings or become rich, he would be left feeling unfulfilled – goals only made to be completed and replaced by something bigger and better. Instead, Picasso chose a value that was endless, forever can be built on and provided room for continual growth. It was the value of “honest expression” which he applied to every art piece throughout his time – “it is growth that generates happiness, not a list of arbitrary achievements”.

Define it for yourself. And make sure you make time for it every day, not tomorrow, or next week. Today. Nothing is more important, truly.

Another quote from The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma states, “Saying that you don’t have time to improve your thoughts and your life is like saying you don’t have time to stop for gas because you are too busy driving. Eventually, it will catch up with you”.

“Ten years from now, make sure you can say that you chose your life, you didn’t settle for it.” – Mandy Hale.

Let life surprise you.

This is something that has been on repeat in my mind before any decision I have made lately. Let life surprise you.

I have mentioned this before in my first blog, something my dad said to me, “The only thing you can know for certain about the future is that things will never go as planned, we only plan for things because that is better than doing nothing.”

I always think of our thoughts as being a product of everything we have ever gone through in our lives. And when we predict what is going to happen, we tap into these thoughts to help protect ourselves from shortcomings. It is part of being a human that we essentially predict and protect.

I tend to do this in the smallest of ways, in which I will already tell myself how a situation is going to make me feel. Whether it is anxious, happy, frustrated, nervous. Instead of putting myself in the situation and letting myself feel what I feel, naturally. Absorbing the new experience.

When we try predict, we aren’t allowing room for all the new feelings, the new experiences, the new emotions we have never felt. That is where the magic is. Giving up control, and realizing life will always surprise you in ways you could have never imagined. I’ve found myself to be way more content living this way.

Detachment with a splash of no expectations.

Lastly, romanticize your damn life.

Take yourself on dates, write notes to your friends, tell them how much you love and appreciate them, buy that slice of cake and coffee and put your earphones in like a 2000’s rom-com and be mysterious, be messy, be kind, be unapologetically yourself, stop trying to be perfect and embrace the imperfect nature of life.

Remember to love others, but love yourself harder.

We are all just trying to figure things out,  how exciting?