4 Lessons Anxiety Has Taught Me In 2015

2015 was a year that had a lot of life lessons for me ever since I admitted to my anxiety issues. It was filled with many ups, and equally many downs. Through both, anxiety played a huge role in helping me define how the year went for me. Whilst the year has been great for me as I had many successes, I have learnt some things that I hope to pass on to people so that they can learn to live a better and more meaningful life come 2016 and beyond.

1. Lesson 1: Admit that you are not perfect, but you are still amazing the way you are. There was one week where work from multiple avenues of extracurriculars, extra projects at my job and personal issues caused my anxiety to worsen. I may have burned bridges whilst handling a lot of it and that added onto personal issues because I never acknowledged that anything was wrong with me. Only after I started having breathing difficulties for no reason at night and started getting headaches did I realize that something was affecting me, and I sought help from a counsellor. I was told that I was very close to getting diagnosed with clinical anxiety, but I intervened at the right time to make sure that I was able to cope before it got worse. I realized then and there that I was not alone in the fight against anxiety. More importantly, I should have embraced that I had anxiety, but it was not something that would have crippled me in any way had I admitted it and sought help early.
2. Lesson 2: In order to keep some of the great things in life, you need to be able to let them go. This was one of the biggest things that affected me throughout the year, and close friends would be able to back this up. I had a friend I talked to for the good parts of my 2015, and I only initially saw her as a friend and nothing more. However, through all the random conversations, through the meet-ups and through just the time spent with her, one day I woke up realizing that I had feelings for my friend. I however was scared of losing her from my life, even as a friend. I became more irritable when I talked to her, and I started acting much more weirder around her, all because I was scared that admitting how I felt would cause us to not be friends anymore. Things digressed between us due to me acting weird, and only when things digressed to a point where we were not talking did I tell her how I truly felt for her. As such, when I look back, I feel that I should not have let the fear of losing her affect me and I should have told her how I felt as early as possible. Not that I would have had a shot with her or stay close friends if I told her early, but it would have caused me less mental anxiety and worry in the future had I told her early about how I felt. To that friend (if you are reading it), I want to let you know that whilst you may have been wrong in some ways during that brief time we were close, do know that I was wrong for keeping things from you for super long as well as for many other things.
3. Lesson 3: Keep priorities straight. This was something else that affected me. I took on a lot of extracurricular commitments, took on being ambitious for projects and took on a part time job on top of my academics. I had an easy academic term, but I made that easy academic term really hard for me by doing too much. I lost track of what my priorities in life were, I lost track of why I was doing some of the things and eventually I was questioning every day why I was doing some of the things I am doing. I skipped social outings with friends because I wanted to focus on work, and many times I questioned why did I do that. This whole lifestyle of too much work caused me to be anxious all the time, and I was constantly unhappy without being able to explain why I was unhappy. Over time, I realized that I should take a few steps back, and honestly question myself what do I really want. Only when I can find an answer to that, would I have been able to keep track of the commitments I should be keeping and letting go of the commitments I do not want to keep.
4. Lesson 4: Do not let haters affect who you are. I will assure you that no matter what you do, you are unable to get a fully sound 100% approval from everyone. Haters will exist everywhere. The more leadership roles you gain, and the more power you start wielding, the amount of haters visible would be greater. Haters are also going to make you feel that you are wrong, just because they do not like you or because you may have done something that has unwittingly hurt them. Whatever it is, they are going to hate you and going to tell you that you are doing wrong no matter what. At the end of the day, I would definitely say to listen to haters no matter what. But do not let all of their words affect who you are as a person and what your goals in life are. Giving in to some haters, who basically hated my happy-go-lucky nature and wanted to make me feel bad for it, caused me to suppress who I normally was for a period and made me be tame and serious. That caused me to be unhappy with who I was for that while and I was unable to enjoy anything else as a result.

The key lesson that I want to share that is common to all 4 points is this: be yourself no matter what. There are different sub lessons attached to each point along with the main lesson that I just shared. With that I would like to wish all of you a Happy 2016, and may 2016 be filled with many successes and many life-long learning experiences. And may you not change yourself for anything or anyone but yourself.