I still can’t believe that it has been over six months since the pandemic has started. I will admit that I was one of those people that were in denial and assumed that it would be over in a couple of months. These past few months have been hard for everyone, but it has led to some big transformations in my life and the lives of people around me.
1) Making peace with my past
One of the main lessons I had to learn was to let go and move on from the past. Spending months without partying, hanging out with friends, and other distractions really gave me time to reflect on my past experiences. I realized that a lot of my childhood experiences caused me to have limiting beliefs that were hindering me from moving on to a better chapter of my life. With my time alone, I had to find peace with experiences and people from my past. I would be lying if I said that I have fully moved on but I’m glad that I at least started the process.
2) Being more grateful for my friends and family
I learned to be more grateful for the time I have with my loved ones. Life is short and life is fragile. You never know what can happen to your loved ones and how quickly your whole world can change. During the winter semester, I didn’t make as big an effort to spend time with my friends as I should have. By being busy with school and other things going on in my life, I always just thought that fun could wait until I figured my life out. Now that I haven’t seen most of my friends in months, I regret not having those moments together.
3) Accepting that it’s okay to fail
I had to be realistic and realize that I’m not going to just randomly wake up one day and realize what my purpose in life is. For the past few years, I considered myself to be in a “go with the flow” mentality. Although that can be very helpful to have in some situations, I was actually just lying to myself and avoiding issues I didn’t want to deal with. I didn’t want to think about what I wanted to do with my life because I was afraid of failure and afraid of getting my hopes up. I had to realize that the only way I would figure out my passions was to actually explore different interests and accept the possibility of failing at them.
2020 hasn’t been the easiest year, but I have to admit that I’m grateful for it. I am not the same person I was at the beginning of the year and I think that’s a good thing.