I’m doing something a little different today. I turned 42 earlier this year and it hit me hard because this was the age my sister was when she died.  So I looked back on my life and thought I’d share some of the life lessons my 42 years have garnered.

Be Intentional

We fall into “routine” too easily. For some things, it’s great, such as having a simple routine for doing our chores. But if we are not careful, we can become complacent and thoughtless about other aspects of our lives. Taking the time to be intentional, purposeful, helps us to connect with others and stops us from drifting a little too aimlessly (though aimless can sometimes be nice… in moderation. 😉 )

Failure Is Useful

As adults, it should be well learnt that failing and making mistakes is useful. But sometimes we can forget that. We punish ourselves for making mistakes, for trying and failing and thus give up. It can be embarrassing or make us frustrated. But failure is just trying something and learning you need to do it differently. As writers, we often use the Try-and-Fail Cycle within our stories – sometimes we just have to work through our own Try-and-Fail Cycle too.

Acknowledge The Small Wins

If I latch onto the Failure is Useful, I should mention that acknowledging the small wins is important. Especially if you have or are in the Try-and-Fail Cycle. We are often pushed to do better, achieve bigger, to keep going – the pressure and push from ourselves, society, family etc. sometimes feels never-ending. It can get disheartened at times, always busy, always rushing forward. So take the time to acknowledge small wins, and enjoy them! My partner and I made the decision last year to make notes of small pleasures and wins every month and then note them down in a book. It has been illuminating.

Cultivate Hope

In a world full of bad news stories, horrors from across the globe and struggles that never seem to end. It can be hard on the soul. Yes, there are bad things and bad people. But there are always good things and good people too. Watch out for constant negative thinking that can pull you into a spiral. Keep that little flicker of hope alive.

Cultivate Happiness

Similar to the above, cultivate happiness. There are great things in this world you just have to find them. When the news seemed to stop including positive stories within their feeds, I reduced watching it. I like to read Positive News and have Squirrel News on my phone to give me a boost and help me find some happiness in the world. Find joy in small things – a great cup of tea (or coffee), the birds in the garden, a good book etc. Don’t chase happiness with money.

Get A Handle On Your Money, Early

You will be surprised how fast time goes. And money is a commodity necessary in our world. The sooner you understand it and learn how to use it wisely – from understanding your paycheck, paying into a pension pot (start this early!), learning about investments, finding out what benefits are due you or just understanding the basics like compound interest, best banks for your money and what real assets are. 

Most people aren’t taught anything about money, family usually teaches that but not everyone was taught so bad advice or no advice can be passed down. Take it into your own hands to learn from the experts. I learnt a lot of money advice from my grandmother and it has helped me so much – the rest I went out and learned for myself.

Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

As someone fraught with anxiety, I can tell you the comfort zone is awesome. But nothing grows there. Despite struggling with anxiety my entire life, I have refused to allow it to overwhelm me at every turn. If you never move outside your comfort zone, you’ll soon find that comfort zone gets smaller and smaller.

So push those boundaries, and take small steps that make you a little uncomfortable. Growth and development happen when you do. When we were young learning to read and write where uncomfortable. But we do it because it’s necessary. No one is saying if you have a fear of public speaking sign up to give a TedTalk! But just find something you need to leave your comfort zone for and try it. It’s one of the reasons I started #TheMerryWriter hashtag game and then we morphed it into a podcast.

Embrace Your Mistakes

I talked about failure, so let’s talk about mistakes. We all make mistakes, and how we handle them says a lot. Whether it was a simple, honest mistake or one that you made because you weren’t paying attention or didn’t listen to instructions etc.

Acknowledge, admit and accept them. Yes, there may be consequences, you may upset people or you may get reprimanded by an authority figure such as your boss. But owning our mistakes is important and so is learning from them. Don’t hide them.

Let Yourself Play

Being carefree is not wholly the dominion of children, there is nothing wrong with having some time to find joy and wonder in things. Remember when you were little and just ran around playing on swings and slides, flying kites, running around with abandon, making cardboard forts etc* Yes, as adults we have responsibilities and chores and errands and expectations. But find some time to put that aside, when you can, and just play – be joyful. Feed the ducks! Fly that kite. Rent a giant bouncy castle!

My partner and I have fold-down kites we keep in the car, we regularly feed the ducks and I think it was last year we bounced on a giant bouncy castle!

*Not everyone’s childhood is the same, so insert in what fun things you hopefully did as a child

Not Everyone Will Agree With You

And that’s okay!  We see the world differently, our perspective comes from a multitude of sources – upbringing, responsibilities, learned experience, religion, culture and a lot more.  If you expect everyone to see things the same way and agree with you then you are in for a lot of stress and upset.

This doesn’t mean we can’t take the time to learn from others and see things from their point of view – but don’t try and force everyone to see what you see or to agree with everything you do. We are all very different and that’s what makes us awesome.

Keep Things Simple

We tend to complicate things, I swear it’s just how human brains are wired! The more we complicate things the more time and energy is used up. Reduce the number of questions you have to answer in a day, streamline as much as you can and cut away the chaff that is not serving you.

This can be as simple as setting up a weekly meal plan and grocery list, to re-evaluating your life entirely and working to make big changes so that you might just have more time, energy and maybe even money to do more fun things. 😉

Stay Curious

There is always something new to try and learn. Never let anyone say you are too old to learn new things. Yes, there may be things that are outside of your scope – but there is so much more that isn’t. Remember being younger and being curious?

Maybe you wanted to learn all about dinosaurs, or wondered how things worked? We lose a lot of our childlike curiosity. We tell ourselves we can’t learn a new language or we haven’t the time to try new hobbies. Catch yourself with those thoughts, and allow yourself to be curious about what you could try.

Be Brave

Sometimes, you need to act despite your fear. There is so much that people fear, small fears and large fears. I talked about failure and mistakes. People fear making mistakes, fear the embarrassment of failure, fear taking the next step or trying something new. Be brave, sometimes.

Take Action

This connects to Be Brave. We can tangle ourselves in knots considering we want to try something. Maybe we want to start a business, run a marathon or change our eating habits. In a lot of cases, it is so easy to just research about it, think about it, discuss it with everyone – you know, do everything EXCEPT start. The best things happened to me when I did less thinking and more action.

When we moved to Northern Ireland, when I started my business, when Rachel and I started the podcast. All of these things could have taken so much longer because my perfectionism demands I am aware of every little detail… but I just thought “screw it” and jumped in.  And what happened? I learned as I went, made mistakes (we covered why that’s okay), had the odd failure (we covered that too) and enjoyed so much of it!

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In order not to make this a massive post, I will be breaking it down into (probably 3) posts!  Thanks for taking the time to read it.

You may have noticed I’ve not been around much over the last few weeks, I’ve not been in the headspace for blogging. I have been watching the last videos we have of my sister and just dealing with a lot of stuff that has been coming up. I appreciate your patience.

Read Part 2

Read Part 3 (out on 13th October)

Happy writing & stay safe

I write articles on writing, marketing, blogging, organising, social media, books and some random stuff.  I also create free printable resources.  If you find my content helpful and entertaining, consider supporting me on ko-fi (where you will also find extra content I post).  All donations go to keeping my website running and helping me move towards publishing my novels.