5 Biggest Lessons That 2022 Taught Me.
2022 was a pivotal year for me for personal growth, the closeness of my relationship with myself, and my approach to love and relationships. It brought a plateload of discomfort and a VIP fast-access pass for going inwards to do inner work that I never thought I had the strength for. If I ever write a memoir of my life, I’ve decided that this year will get its own chapter, and I will title it “My Fast and Furious Spiritual Awakening”. Stay tuned.
With seasons of big change, adaptation and innovation are crucial for staying in the game of life and making sure you don’t lose pace. To evolve in life, as you must to evolve in your career, you have to look at your approach to challenges to see what is and what is not working. This requires a lot of introspection and honesty with ourselves, which are also key skills to master if we want to ensure that we are living authentically and outside of our own comfort zones.
I documented a lot about what I learned from adversity this year in my daily journal. From the patterns of challenges and behaviours that I lived this past year, here are five of the biggest gifts that 2022 brought to my learning:
- Creating the life you want from scratch means choosing change above familiarity over and over again.
When we choose a life that exists only in our visions and dreams, we often commit to walking a path that does not show us how close we are to our destination for quite some time. This is especially true if we are building a life that is nothing like what we observed growing up. In situations like these, where it feels like any evidence of our progress is scarce, it is extremely tempting to want to turn and go right back where you came from.
What we must understand is that this happens because our brains are not hardwired to adapt to change quickly. When we have lived in a certain place, in a certain relationship, or with a certain set of habits for a long time, rewiring the neural networks that enforce those behaviours takes more time than we think. It requires hundreds and thousands of repetitions for new thought patterns and behaviours to become encoded. Until they do, it may feel like we are stranded in open ocean for some time, but this should not be the reason that we ditch the change we have made to return to what feels familiar. In fact, I would argue that this feeling should be the very reason why you keep moving forward, because it means that you are stepping into a new version of yourself.
As author Brianna Weist says, “the heart is used to believing before it can see”. There is a reason you grew out of your old shoes in the first place, and it is likely that returning to them will not bring you the joy you are seeking. Braving the unfamiliar is what will bring you the growth you need to become who you want to be.
2. It’s not you versus life. Life is on your team.
When we see life as our opponent, it can feel like we must overcome adversity only to prove our own strength and conviction to life itself. This sucks a lot of the growth and fulfillment right out of the challenges, because this mentality blinds us to the gifts hidden in life’s hardships.
Think about a time where a rejection you experienced lead to redirection towards a bigger and brighter opportunity. Are you happier than you think you would be if you had not gotten turned away the first time? If the answer is yes, this is a direct evidence that life does not place discomfort in your life to punish you, but to help you grow into the version of yourself that you are meant to become.
You hinder your own evolution each time you try to force things that you think are best for you, because this blinds you from seeing the opportunities that life is trying to direct you to. Treat life like it is on your team and frequently ask it what it is trying to teach you from your experiences.
3. It is not your responsibility to try to make others see the love you want to give them.
C.S. Lewis once said that “love is never wasted, for its value does not rest upon reciprocity”. That is not to say that we should not hope for respect, kindness, or compassion in return from our loved ones; however, what I have learned is that our biggest responsibility in any relationship is to love in the best ways we know how, from our own authenticity. When that authentic expression of love is not received, that does not mean that you should change how you give love. It may just mean that that person is not ready to receive that part of your essence.
Receiving love from others can be very difficult if we aren’t well-versed in showing love to ourselves, but we can choose to learn how we invite that love in. We cannot decide when another person will make that choice, and it is certainly not our job to push them to make it. We hurt only ourselves when we try to make someone see how worthy our love is of receiving. The people in your life who see its worthiness see it because they choose to see it, and choose to receive that love even if it pushes them out of their comfort zone.
Do not lose yourself trying to make anyone accept the way you love. Go to where your expression of love is welcomed and mirrored by the authentic expression of love of others.
4. Seeing someone’s humanity beneath what you think they should be is actually one of the hardest human skills to cultivate.
The culture created by modern dating apps teaches us that we can get an accurate picture of someone’s persona from a couple of pictures and a 150-character bio. As such, many of us have implicitly learned to see people as a series of tickboxes that either do or do not meet our criteria for what comprises our ideal partner or a perfecr friend.
I’m not saying that first impressions are not important, but I am saying that it is very important to check what expectations you are carrying into your interactions. No one deserves that weight placed on them (even if they are unaware of it), especially the first time you meet them.
Our expectations and unconscious ideologies about what we think we need a person to be can hinder us from seeing them fully for their authenticity, their vulnerability, their creativity, their ambition, and more. When we remove these tinted glasses and open ourselves up to what a person can teach us from who they are, we create a space where we can cultivate relationships that are rooted in authenticity. I believe that there is no greater gift that we can give each other than that.
If you were once betrayed by a friend or had your heart broken by past lover, it is normal to enter future interactions with your guard up; however, as my old roommate used to say, “there is a difference between living in fear and living in awareness”. There absolutely are things that you should not tolerate from others again, but no one that you interact with for the first time should carry the burden of what someone else once made you feel. Try your best to enter new interactions with an open mind and an open heart, and trust that your intuition will tell you when and if to walk away if it is necessary.
5. Your freedom begins the moment you release yourself from what you think the actions of others say about you.
I really believe that the phrase “hurt people hurt people” is true. We often can only have connection, empathy, and communication with others at the level to which they are aware of themselves. This leaves a lot of opportunity for us to dissapoint each other and ourselves when it comes to our relationships.
When we are kids, we develop thought patterns that become engrained in our subconscious and become part of how we see the world. Attachment wounds, gender roles, and fears around abandonment, intimacy, and confrontration can impact our perception more deeply and more subtly than we think. This is why inner work is so important, because the more awareness you build about your own thought schemas, the more you begin living according to your own compass rather than from a place of survival.
You are not your thoughts, and you are not what happened to you. If you have a friend who never listens to you, this does not mean that what you have to say is not important. If your partner leaves you, this does not mean that you are worth abandoning. If you fear conflict (like myself), it may just mean that you never learned how to properly approach it.
Sometimes life places us in situations that force us see the depth of our negative core beliefs. This can feel overwhelming, but it is up to us to believe in ourselves and break our own cycles. It is up to us to embrace who we are while striving to be better and praising ourselves for showing up to learn how to be better. Someone else’s complexity of thoughts, regard, and communication say nothing about your worth except what you allow it to say.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article this week. I hope 2023 is kind to you, and that you find the strength to make this year what you want it to be for you.
