Twenty-five years on earth. No small feat.
If you’ve made it this far, farther, or are still behind (you child), I hope there is something on this list that journeys with you and makes you live a little differently.
1. There is nothing God asks that isn’t morally superior.
Sam Adeyemi once said (to paraphrase) — “If after serving God wholeheartedly, I got to the end of my life and found out there is no God, I would have lived a good life anyway.” A radiantly exceptional one.
2. Our grandest mission is to become love.
God says “love Me” and “love others as yourself”. Honoring these parties is to me, the unending overarching mission of life. To love God. To love myself. To love others. A mission so exacting, it takes a lifetime.
3. The words you speak become the house you live in.
Come to find out the weapons fashioned against us aren’t arrows, but words (Apostle Selman), and it is our job to create our own and prophesy them over our lives in Jesus’ name.
4. Be utterly present.
Don’t try to escape your life. Don’t glorify phases you’re not in yet. Do not daydream, enjoy the Now. Don’t let unlimited desires cloud your peace. It is perfectly healthy to aspire to being better but we were never called to aspire to happiness. And when you get something you want in the future, wouldn’t something in your present surely be missing? If you can’t have it all at the same time, doesn’t that mean there’s something remarkably special about each day?
5. Strength train and eat right.
Cardio keeps your heart healthy, building muscle keeps your bones wealthy, and eating right makes your days bright.
6. Do not shake down your past.
Your past self existed in order to guide who you are today. No her, no you. No him, no you. Stop judging old parts of yourself with new information. That’s bullying. As Toni Fifi put it, ‘a younger version of me was never going to do what I’m doing today. Lamenting the things you didn’t do in the past means that you’re finally ready to do them now. So, go do it.’
7. Don’t let your thoughts consume you.
Dwelling in the mind is something I did for a very long time (partly because I had Pure O traits). I always felt the need to over-analyse my thoughts or overthink my ideas. But I am learning now how important it is to live than to consider living; to get out into the world more often than I think about getting out into the world.
8. You may never rule the world, but you can rule your mind
Our perception of life directly determines our reality. To think that we can live a different life if we just change the way we think about it is perhaps the magic we spend our entire lives searching for.
9. Life is a range of emotions.
And your enjoyment of it—even success at it—is going to be heavily dependent on your ability to remain grounded when processing complex emotions like anger, fear, anxiety, frustration, grief, sadness, and so on. You will not be happy or content all the time. Only gratitude can endure life.
10. 1,2,3 breathe
If you’re easily angered or triggered, you’re easily manipulated. Sometimes I feel like dwelling in my anger, sadness, or displeasure and making whatever decisions I want in those moments but in truth, feelings come and go. When they’re gone, you’re left asking yourself, “Who did I let myself become for a feeling that wasn’t even here to stay?”
11. You can’t control everything.
Making plans is like throwing dice, it’s the wind that decides where it lands. I used to be a BIG sulker when things did not go my way, but I’ve learned to let go fast. I noticed that if you don’t leave spilled milk alone, sometimes another cup falls.
12. Serve others.
While I am the number one supporter of a life that prioritizes your progress, desires, and dreams, I know it is all worthless if it isn’t used in helping and blessing others. When I look at the world’s greatest problems, I can’t help but ask myself: what will I contribute to make it better? From a global scale to my very own neighborhood?
13. You don’t need to hang on to every relationship.
Actually, you’re probably better off without them. I came to find that what I often romanticize about past relationships is me (my energy, my commitment, my passion). I’m the beautiful factor I love. Some people who come into our lives are simply life lessons in human form. You take the lesson and advance.
14. Cherish your friendships as they are.
If there’s something missing in the friendships you have, odds are you need to find additional friends, not attempt to change the ones you have. You can’t teach people how to walk you home, but you can cherish their company and seek more elsewhere.
15. Some relationships will only be formed when you start adding value to the world.
What if you started knitting tomorrow, since you say you love it so much and it’s your one true passion. And what if when you put your knitted work out there, you find people who knit and people who love people who knit, and you get the chance to enter rooms you would have never entered if no one knew you knit?
16. Love is not a settling game.
I do not have what one would call “practical advice” on this because I’ve never been in a romantic relationship. But I fully believe in waiting for the right life partner and never settling; that if you’re destined to have one, then the right one is out there.
17. Mistakes aren’t a problem, they are the solution.
Failing is literally how we progress. In fact, for every lesson learned in this world, someone had to fall flat on their face first. When we read books, listen to others, or follow formulas, we are able to use other people’s experiences to escape pitfalls in our own lives. But did you know there are lessons only you can teach yourself?
18. Prioritize your financial capacities.
You don’t have to be passionate about how you make money at first. One mountain gets you to the next and sometimes the first mountain looks like boring stuff. But the need for financial freedom and the ability to luxuriate in monetary comfort is absolutely undebatable. Prioritize making money earlier in your life (at all legal costs).
19. Place your passions and purpose at the forefront of your mind.
Take a step towards it every day. Granted, it takes a varying number of years for each person to figure this out and even evolves as we grow older, but it is paramount to chase what you know is calling you. First, it is why you were placed here. Second, it is all you would be able to think about on your dying bed.
20. Look good even to the grocery store.
How you look directly corresponds to how you feel, meaning how you dress is how you act. You need to care about it. I’m on an ever-evolving mission to develop my style and appearance into a power system that makes me feel like a million bucks at all times.
21. You create a happy life when you do the things you say you’ll do.
There are few things quite as beautiful as the happiness of excellence. You have to build the habits. You have to be disciplined when motivation wears off. If you say you need more time before you can do this, you will get more time, and more pain. “I don’t do what I feel and I don’t do what I want. I do what I need.”
22. Think of everything you are often.
Less, all you want to be. The best version of yourself is an approach, not an end result. So no one deserves love more than the version of you today. Why do you reserve respect, passion, and admiration only for your future self as if it isn’t you who will become her? (Or him. Him. I always forget the boys).
23. A perfect life? That has never happened.
So really really loosen up.
24. If you tie your worth to age, it’ll reduce every year.
I’ve been very lost in comparing everything against time and age. My success, their success, my shortcomings, their shortcomings … but everyone is on a uniquely designed path. God wrote billions of stories and placed the chapters wherever He saw fit. You are not behind, you are in a different story.
25. You’re not nobody just because you don’t mean something to strangers.
It is so easy to get lost in the idea of being a main character in a world where nearly everything is digitized and your latest life update is only one network bar away from loading in everyone’s faces. But there is nothing to prove. To exist, is to be worthy. The things we do are expressions of worth, not a creation of it.
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