My 2020 Lessons

The year of 2020 was certainly one of the most challenging yet eye opening years I’ve ever had, and I would like to believe that a lot of people reading this right now would agree to it.

Nevertheless, with every struggle comes experience and with every experience comes a lesson. 2020 was full of lessons, and all these lessons taught us something valuable and important to keep in mind for the future.

There are lots of lessons I took away from last year, probably too many to tell, but I’ll share a few that stood out to me. Here’s a very summarised and brief list of 7 lessons I would like to share with you all today in no particular order.

Spend more time with Family and loved ones

Tomorrow isn’t promised and sometimes we forget about that, but now more than ever, it’s important for us to spend as much time with loved ones and family and cherish every little moment, at the end of the day it’s all about the little things in life, and moments with family and loved ones is something that nothing else can ever replace.

Your Mental Health is Important

Mental health is not a buzzword, it’s a real thing, and you’re not meant to be perfect, you’re not meant to be on your A game all the time, it’s okay to have off days, it’s okay to not be okay. Don’t neglect your mental health, it’s just as important as your physical health, so look after your mind the same way you do for your body.

Work-Life Balance is Essential

Generally speaking, most of us spend around 8 hours a day 5 days a week all at work (sometimes even more!), and with this pandemic, most people had to shift to remote working which made the lines between work life and personal life extremely blurry. It’s important to not lose sight and not forget that your personal life will always come first, as it should.

Be Present, Enjoy the Moment

We spend so much of our lives just chasing goals, and for a lot of people, once we achieve one goal, we move onto the next one and the next one and so on. But when do we stop to appreciate the present moment? Goals will always be there, once you achieve them, there will be more goals, there will always be something else after that something. Don’t get too caught up in the highs or the lows, just be present, enjoy the moment.

Take One Day at a Time

With so much going on, stress, anxiety and uncertainty tend to show up at our doorstep uninvited, but the key is to focus on what you can control, and the things that you can’t control you let them be, focus on what’s within your reach, and don’t try to overdo things too much. Don’t overthink it, just stay calm, enjoy the process and take it day by day, take it one day at a time.

Be Grateful, Count Your Blessings

We tend to focus so much on what we want that we end up forgetting what we already have. Count your blessings, truly, sit down, reflect and count your blessings, I guarantee you, you will realize you had so much more going for you than you initially thought. There’s something comforting and relaxing about being grateful, it’s a feeling that can’t be explained, things could always be better indeed, but things could always be worse as well, so just be grateful for where you are right now and count your blessings.

Being Adaptable is Key

We live in a world where anything is possible, the unexpected can happen, you can be thrown into situations you never anticipated, you can experience things you didn’t think you would get to experience, and you may encounter scenarios you never thought existed before. But none of that matters if you are able to adapt to each and every situation, to each and every experience, and to each and every scenario. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s to be adaptable, because being adaptable is key to navigating this life full of surprises.

Those were a few of the many many lessons I took away from 2020, and the good thing about lessons is that we get to apply them from the moment we learned them onwards, which will make our lives better in the long run.

And on that note, I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year, and may 2021 be a year full of blessings for you and your families.

Stay safe, stay healthy and have a blessed year!