4 Meaningful Lessons From My 34th Year

Each year of life bring us lessons when we can sit and reflect upon them, and I’d like to share four important lessons from my 34th year of life today.

The little things matter

I’ve known for a while that the little things matter- that’s the whole reason I started this blog after all- but this year has really shown me how much impact the little things can have. Connection is one of my favorite meaningful bits of life because the quality of our relationships can directly impact our well-being and how we perceive ourselves in the world. I love Brene Brown’s idea of having marble jar friends: they’re the people who continuously add little positives to your life with their friendship so you know you can trust them over time. As Brene says, “Trust is built in small moments.”

When I reflect on this past year, I’m really honored to say that I have some really wonderful marble jar friends and family in my life, and all of that took a lot of time to build. It was built in a million little everyday moments of care, thoughtfulness, and intentionality- simple texts to see how you’re doing, a personalized murder mystery party for your birthday, a phone call to say hi, and an eagerness to find safe ways to connect during such an unusual time of the pandemic.

My health is another area where the small things matter. I am in a totally different place today with Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS) when compared to last year, and it’s not because I’ve been able to achieve mold avoidance. Of course, that piece of things has to be managed for full recovery in the future. In the meantime, however, I’ve taken care over the past year to invest my time and energy in crafting a routine and utilizing resources that help me manage daily life. It’s been a huge relief to get the sleep I need most nights, to have the energy needed to make it through the work day, and to shift out of survival mode long enough to pursue a few things I enjoy.

I know this isn’t a reality for everyone; I know that some people with CIRS lose their capacity to work. I also know that, for me, the little things have made all the difference over time in managing symptoms so that I don’t have to keep living with life totally on pause while I work to get better. For more details about how I’ve been managing, visit this post.

Thinking a bit larger scale, the same can be said for the pandemic. I learned the value of self-care during the pandemic. For the first time in my life, I had time to take care of myself, and also made time to intentionally plan for connection with those I love. While I don’t deny the far-reaching hardships the pandemic has brought, I can also see how the pandemic offered me opportunities grow. Of course, none of those little things I’ve adopted for self-care have changed the circumstances of the pandemic, but they have filled my life with more meaning and allowed me to show up differently.

Everything has (at least) two sides

On that note about the pandemic, the older I get, the more I understand that there are positives and negatives to everything in life. Hardly anything is all good or all bad. As someone who has had anxiety as a constant companion since I was a very young child, I had put a lot of stock into to believing the world was black and white- that it, in fact, had to be for me to be able to control things. I’m thankful that that belief got me to where I am now, and I have learned that life can be different because there’s so much vibrancy in the shades of gray in life.

Those shades of gray make life feel a lot safer, too, because it alludes to balance instead of living in the extremes. I think the scale can sometimes be long-term, but I think that balance is what we’re all seeking and what eventually finds us in some capacity. For me, the pandemic hasn’t been all bad because I’ve learned how to care for myself and deeply invested in my most valued relationships. Thinking long-term, I’m in my 30s and never learned how to truly care for myself until 2020. My 20s were miserable overall, to be honest. Those years were full of working on someone else’s schedule and moving so fast I could hardly breathe. There was so little joy and so little meaning for me during those years, and that’s a lot of years to wait through for things to balance out, but they did. Not only that, but the capacities I developed around determination, grit, and commitment during my 20s will serve me well in the future. I can take some of the rigidity I used to get through challenges and apply it intentionally in life now with more balance.

I’m a firm believer of Albus Dumbledore’s saying that “happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light,” from J.K. Rowling‘s Harry Potter books. I have yet to learn about the positives that will come from CIRS, but I’m keeping my mind and heart open as I work towards healing.

It’s never too late to change a limiting belief

Speaking of Harry Potter, I tried to read the first book when I was in fifth grade and I wasn’t able to get through the first few pages because they didn’t make sense to me. I had a stressful childhood and didn’t engage in much imaginative play, plus with the anxiety that accompanied me on every journey, I needed things to be concrete so as not to get overwhelmed. I set the book down and thought I might try again at some point, but then my younger brother whizzed through the books, which were clearly easy to read for him. That solidified the idea for me that I simply wasn’t smart enough to read them and I did not try again for many years. I watched all the movies and loved them, but didn’t understand so much of what was going on at the deep level that I wanted to.

This past winter break, I decided to try reading the first book again, and I was instantly hooked. For the past two and a half months, I have been eager to join Hermione, Ron, and Harry in their quests every evening before bed. I spent decades thinking I wasn’t smart enough to read these books based on my childhood experience. It was a relief I didn’t even know I was seeking to be able to let go of that childhood belief that I wasn’t smart enough. And, oh my, what a joy it was to read for pleasure! I’ve never laughed out loud at books like I have with this series. Harry Potter brought me joy.

This was a small thing, indeed, but I wonder how many times over the years I reinforced that idea that I wasn’t smart enough to do something, or that I didn’t deserve to read books for pleasure and joy. Of course, I can’t quantify the answer to that question, but I know that being able to let go of the limiting belief that I wasn’t smart enough is one less thing I’m lugging around, and every little thing counts. No matter the belief, I think there’s always time and space to let go of what no longer serves you.

Slow is smooth and smooth is fast

I heard this quote on a podcast episode for the first time this year, and learned it to be a saying of the Navy SEALs. I just love it. Living in a world where everything moves so quickly and being personally prone to slip into the whirlwind of life, I love this idea of slowing down so that things go smoothly, and when things go smoothly, that allows them to progress with fewer errors so things more along more quickly.

I’m applying this to my work on healing with CIRS. I wish there were fast, simple, easy solutions for mold avoidance, but there aren’t any, because traditional homes and buildings aren’t built to mitigate mold, indoor air quality is unregulated, and money is a disgustingly huge factor. Moving slowly allows me to make decisions intentionally to prioritize my health, and hopefully, that will pay off long term by allowing me to find the right fit to support healing.

I also find this highly relevant in my work as a therapist. Any kind of deep work with people has to come from a place where trust is build. We need trust to build emotional safety, and we need emotional safety to build connection. Much like farming, none of that can be crammed or rushed. But once it’s built, then the work can progress. My preference is to work slowly and intentionally, because slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

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