20th New Year's Resolutions

It’s my birthday and I thought I’d write something about it.

That being said, I’m not really fussy about my birthday. I hate the, “What’s for your birthday?” question because it makes me uncomfortable. It feels like I should be doing something to commemorate it but I never know what the procedure is.

What activities scream, "BIRTHDAY"?

I have no idea.

One thing I do like though, is treating my birthday like some sort of genesis. It’s a new beginning for me. It’s a time for me to reflect on the past year, the things I did and didn’t achieve while planning for the year ahead (and what better timing than the beginning of the school year?).

Instead of doing a “20 things I've learned” for my 20th, I decided to write down some of the things I hope to learn - the things I’m working on. We never stop learning and growing as human beings despite our age. There is no one person that embodies perfection but we can always try to get better than we are. I’ll obviously adjust these lessons as I grow. For now, these are things close to my heart that I want to learn in order to be who I want to be. I'll keep it short and sweet.

(Excuse the number of GIFs, I enjoyed searching them up.)

1. I am learning to celebrate myself.

Whenever something good happens to me, I’m very uncomfortable with being happy for myself. I brush off my achievements because I feel guilty for being happy for myself – like I’m being proud or vain. But what’s wrong with being proud of myself?

Well.

I’ve had “be humble” pounded into my head pretty much forever but in chasing humility, I guess I failed to differentiate between self-deprecation and modesty.

2. I am learning how not to care what people think.

Most of my life has been dictated by thoughts like: “But what’ll they think of me or say about me?”

That's because for a long time, I lived in a community where everyone spoke, unprompted, when someone made a decision to do something. I was at a boarding school. If John decided to pierce his ears, everybody knew and made it their business. So I got accustomed to living in discomfort because of other people's opinions because one day it could be me. And I didn’t want that.

It was like living under a microscope – not even a magnifying glass. I haven't really shaken it out of my system but I'm working on it.

3. I’m learning that I owe nobody an explanation.

I always feel the need to over-explain or even (just) explain myself. It's become a bad habit and I need to curb it. I want to be able to just say, “Nope,” and end a conversation without feeling like I need to follow it up with anything. Sometimes I don’t even have an explanation for things but I feel like I have to come up with one for the things I say to be valid. It's unnecessary and coming up with explanations is tiresome. I also feel like the annoying "let me explain" character in a movie.

4. I’m learning that I am just as valuable as someone else.

I’m always saying, “It’s okay,” when people sort of step on me (metaphorically and literally).

I have to keep reminding myself that my time is just as valuable as someone else’s.

But there’s a very thin line between realizing my own value and comparing myself to other people.

This is a hard one for me because knowing I’m as valuable as John makes me feel worse when I see John thriving while I’m drowning. Because if we are inherently the same, why does it feel like they're 10 times better?

5. I’m learning to check in with myself.

This is the hardest one for me.

Not disparaging myself or feeling sorry for myself. Just neutrally checking in with myself. This is the difference between me saying, “You idiot! What the heck is wrong with you? What are you doing?” and me saying, “That wasn’t the best idea so I won’t do that again. What do I want the rest of this time frame to look like? What can I do to make it look like that or as close to that as possible?”

6. I’m learning how to be brave.

I didn’t want to post this either as a video or a blog post but…here we are.

Happy New Year to me.