“look up, lean back, be strong, you didn’t think you’d live this long” – To be honest, I didn’t really expect to live a long life until recently. Growing up, I was always so depressed and had such low self esteem that I didn’t imagine a full future for myself. It’s a bit jarring to realize that life can be so long and to start planning on how I can treat myself better; It’s like my life and responsibilities opened up in a whole new way.

“old habits die for a couple of weeks, then i start doing them again” – Consistency is a very difficult thing. What is even harder is to forgive yourself after being inconsistent with goals. For me, the key to staying on track with my goals is to give myself compassion when I don’t meet my expectations, to recognize that I am not perfect and accept myself as valid in my imperfection. This is also a practice and doesn’t come easy, especially at first, but it’s how I’m learning to love myself and treat myself better.

“be very careful out there, stop trying to have so many friends” – Growing up, I thought that the most important thing was to be liked by others, to be popular. All the movies and TV shows told me that the popular girl was the person to look up to. I have a very different point of view now as an adult. Now I know that people who are popular are often watered down. To be liked by many means that you are agreeable to many. I don’t want to live up to those standards, I just want to be authentically myself. Now, I treasure the handful of close friends that I have and I value their opinions. I am working on devaluing stranger’s or acquaintance’s opinions about me as much, because I noticed that they don’t always have my best intentions towards me.