I celebrated my 26th birthday this month, and I always enjoy getting older. Things make more sense (but sometimes less) and my hair grows longer. Sometimes I get a little confused because I still feel like a kid at heart, but I also feel much wiser as each year goes by.

I was excited to compile this list of lessons that I’ve learned so far in my 20s. Some of these I have learned myself, but some of them have been brought to my awareness with the help of others. I have spent many years refining myself and it’s a never ending process. Some I am still learning currently. This is a long post, but I hope it’s worth your time and that you learn something like I have. Please leave any comments you have below!

Thanks for all the love and good times. Rest in peace, my friends.

1. Grief is an animal of its own.

This is the biggest lesson I have learned this past year (and still am). I thought I understood pain until I was struck with tragic personal loss. The emotional pain turned into physical pain, as I felt the deepest heartache of a lifetime. I didn’t have the coping mechanisms I do now. With the help of talking to people who have been through it, time, patience, courage, and strength, I rise against it, and learn to keep living (and loving) for those who don’t have the chance to anymore.

Grief cannot be rushed or ignored. It needs to take its time moving through you. You need to embrace it to make peace with it. It can swallow you whole, but you have the power to take control over it instead of letting it take control over you.

2. Be patient and gentle with yourself.

Time heals most things, and what it doesn’t heal, is within your power to control, surrender, or forgive.

3. Don’t be your own enemy in your mind; support your thoughts.

It’s easy to let destructive thinking get in the way of your potential and happiness, but you don’t deserve to treat yourself like that. Be kinder to yourself.

4. Write down your thoughts and memories to anchor your journey of self growth.

Be descriptive in your words to capture the memory. Your future self will thank you.

I’ve kept a journal for six years now, and looking back on my thoughts has helped remind me of who I am, where I’ve come from, and what it took to get me to where I am now. And being assured by my past self helps me steer my direction for the future.

5. Hold yourself accountable.

Stop putting up barriers and making excuses for yourself; stop letting fear and doubt control you; don’t play the victim, and stop limiting your potential. You need to be there for yourself: reliable and accountable.

6. Everything falls into place.

Things sometimes don’t make sense in present time. You need the bigger picture to see clearly. From reading my journals, I’ve learned that the present always has missing pieces to the puzzle that is life. The future holds the pieces that start to fit together, and things start to make sense in time. I always know how the story turns out in retrospect.

7. Life is a roller coaster and you need to enjoy the ride.

Life has its highs and lows; sometimes high highs and low lows and not much in between. You need to appreciate everything for what it is. Be grateful for the highs that provided you with happiness, and be grateful for the lows that provided you with lessons.

8. Own who you are.

There is only one you, and you should embrace it and love yourself! You are in the longest relationship with yourself. You deserve to love and accept yourself for who you authentically are.

9. Do not let outside forces negatively influence you.

Whether it’s your peers, family, or social media, do not let external factors negatively influence you into being someone you’re not. Stay true to who you are. Take some time to figure out who that is if you don’t know it yet.

10. Finding yourself is an illusion.

It recently clicked when I read this:

“Finding yourself is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten dollar bill in last year’s winter coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. Finding yourself is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.” - Emily McDowell

11. Allow yourself to be vulnerable with others.

It might be scary, but people connect with vulnerability because it allows them to feel more human because we all go through the same stuff. Each time you have a vulnerable conversation with someone, you and your relationship with them levels up.

12. Communication is key.

Most problems can be solved by communicating, whether it’s in your relationships or at work. Talking it out, laying everything out on the table, and making sure you and others are on the same page in order to move forward with ease.

13. Don’t be afraid of asking for help.

Or taking it when it’s offered to you. Stop making things harder on yourself. Stop thinking that you’re a burden. Stop trying to be polite, prideful, or stubborn and acknowledge that you can’t do everything on your own, and that help is necessary sometimes!

“I am the ding dong sunshine future, your friend forever! And I'm not gonna fall apart on you.” - Amethyst

14. Speak your heart and your truth.

Tell everyone you love that you love them. Apologize to those you owe it to. Thank everyone you're grateful for. Compliment the ones you admire. Make sure those people know that they mean something to you. Take the time to talk to them and see them. Express your honesty, your integrity, and live your truth. Don’t let anything go unsaid. I know that I wish I had said more when I had the chance, but we never know when someone will be gone. Don’t take that for granted.

15. Make the time to take care of yourself.

Define what that means to you, because it’s different for everyone. Treat yourself the way you deserve to be treated and cared for. But make sure you’re actually doing some good and not just sticking a bandage on a wound. i.e. eating healthy, exercise, meditation

16. Don’t let yourself collapse under the weight of your own internal pressures.

Feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders can sometimes break you, but we need to find that balance between what can motivate us and break us. It’s all an internal battle. As the Beatles sing, “boy, you gotta carry that weight a long time.” You have the strength to carry that weight and to let go of some of it when you’re ready to.

17. Look for patterns: in your behavior, in your dreams, in other people.

Observe your behavior from a vantage point without bias. Try to catch yourself in the act of your negative thinking to protect yourself from your own negativity. Look for it in the people around you, too, and spread awareness and conscientiousness.

18. Who you surround yourself with is a reflection of who you are.

One time while I was at a party, my friend made a toast and said, “your friends are a reflection of who you are, and if you don’t like your friends, you need to look inside and figure out what you don’t like about yourself.” - quoted from my journal in 2016

And sometimes you need to take a good look at those around you and ask yourself if they are toxic to you or serving your highest good. Different people are green lights, yellow lights, and red lights. It takes a lot of strength to evaluate who is a green light, who are the yellows, and which reds need to be cut out, but it’s necessary for your highest good.

19. You can’t help everyone.

Sometimes those toxic people want to stay toxic and they don’t want help. You can write it out for them and they will still deny their problems. That is their problem; don’t make it yours. You might (always) care, but it’s not worth bringing yourself down over. It can be hard, frustrating, and heartbreaking to accept, but this is when the power of forgiveness can best serve you.

20. Only you can define what success means to you.

Do not let society or someone else’s definition of success define your own. Success is personal and means something different to every individual. Is your idea of success based one someone else’s or your own? Create your own meaning for you.

21. Failure is not a bad thing.

You don't grow when you receive what you want and succeed. Failure is a better teacher than success. You grow through the process. Fail, fail fast, so you can learn what mistakes to avoid. Failure is an option, and the choice is no.

22. Don’t let yourself get distracted.

It’s so easy to get distracted by things like your mind, other people, and your phone. There are so many enticing things out there that leave you feeling directionally challenged; so many “what ifs, could haves, and maybes” that steer you off course. Stay true to yourself and the goals and ambitions you have committed to yourself. Stay on the path you have worked so hard this far to be on. In my mind this is also known as: finish what you started and reap what you’ve sown.

23. Comparison is the thief of joy.

With conditioning and social media, it’s a daily practice that we are all guilty of and it doesn’t serve us. It’s one of those negative thinking habits that must be stopped or we will continue to cause damage. Under no circumstances should you allow comparison to hold power over you.

Jordan Peterson says it best. “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.”
“Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle,” has also helped me a lot through the years.

24. Take more risks. Do not get too comfortable.

“The comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.”
“You will either step forward into growth or will step back into safety.” - Abraham Maslow

Make the choice to not live in a safe zone and to keep expanding. Being comfortable sometimes might feel good and necessary, but if you have the choice to step outside of your comfort zone, do it, or sometimes life will make that choice for you instead.

25. Boundaries are healthy and necessary.

This lesson is one that never ends, and here are some things I have recently learned:

You are not responsible for other people, helping them, or their happiness. Sometimes not everyone deserves your kindness, especially when they cross the line. Being unkind does not mean being malicious; it means you need to do what needs to be done to protect yourself.
You don’t always need to say yes. There is nothing wrong with saying no. You don’t ALWAYS need to be there for people, especially when you need to put yourself first sometimes.
You don’t always need to explain yourself. Respect your own privacy. Most people don’t care and have more important matters on their mind anyway.
Be unapologetically you. Stop apologizing for everything.

26. Stop expecting YOU from people.

For over a decade now, I keep being hit with this lesson over and over, and letting it get the best of me.

I have always set too high of standards on myself and others. I have had a consistent problem with overestimating myself, creating false illusions and pressures that only led to stress and disappointment that were not created by other people, but were created by ME.

In situations like those, I need to hold myself accountable and accept responsibility that I set my expectations too high, and that’s okay. Forgiveness and acceptance serve their purpose here to help me learn and move on.

“We don’t see people as they are. We see people as we are.” - Anais Nin

We need to remain realistic and accept people (and ourselves) for who they are and not who we want them to be. We can wish them the best: that they make the best choices that serve our highest good, but we cannot control them, and it isn’t healthy to control our idea of them either.

Conclusion

There are so many more lessons I wanted to include in this that I thought of after I wrote it all. But that’s how life is. We just have to keep on going, learning, and remembering. Don’t forget: if a lesson keeps repeating itself in your life, it’s because you haven’t learned it yet.

It was very therapeutic to write this all out and see my progress. I encourage you to create your own versions. The most important lessons to me currently are 1, 6, 13, 19, and 24. What are yours? If you have any lessons you would like to share with me, please share in a comment below. I still have a lot to learn!

26 Lessons at 26