During the year 2020, there were many life lessons. To me, those life lessons were essential because 2020 was pretty challenging. Before the year ends, I wanted to share the last life lessons that 2020 taught me.

In the post, How To finish 2020 Strong, I recommended spending the last few days of the year to review your entire year. I don’t recommend anything that I am not implementing. Therefore, I have spent some time reviewing my year and took some life lessons out of it. 

As I reviewed my year, I realized that there were ultimately three life lessons that I can not ignore in 2021. The first is persistence brings you far, and willingness keeps you motivated. The second is not to take things personally. And the third is to be happy with yourself, and everything will follow.

Persistence brings you far, and willingness keeps you motivated.

One of my goals for 2020 was to keep blogging. Whenever I make a goal, my brain will find anything that has a connection with that goal. I remember scrolling down on Instagram, and I found this video of Patrice C. Washington sharing her thoughts on persistent content.

She was mainly talking about how she was able to keep up with her podcast for three years! And I was amazed by it. So I found motivation and decided that I will be blogging persistently.

After a few weeks, I was procrastinating again. Some days, I would take my time to write, and some other days I was prioritizing other things. However, I wanted to find something that will stop me from quitting. 

I had the marvellous idea to promise my readers, you, that I will post one blog post once a week. On top of that, I will also send you an email first before anyone else. The courage that it took to make such a promise was scary to me. If I didn’t do it, you wouldn’t take me seriously. 

After planning and searching, I realized that I had many things to share. Also, I had to live by my vision to help at least one person through my blog posts. That’s how I found the will to blog. 

I was willing to help someone that needed my help. I was willing to guide indirectly or directly that one person in need. If I have a gift and I’m not using it, that will be a waste. So I was willing to push everything else away to share my voice on this platform. 

Believe me; blogging isn’t easy. You don’t get paid for it, and sometimes, you don’t get praise for it either. Sometimes you will share your voice, and nobody would read, or it won’t hit as you wanted it to touch the person’s heart.

For this life lesson, persistence brings you far, and willingness keeps you motivated; I was able to stay persistent with writing and blogging, even when I had other things going on. What kept me motivated was my will to help others.

No matter your goal, you have to be persistent in making it happen. When you find your way through that persistence, your willingness will motivate you to keep going, remove all distractions, and follow your plans.

Do not take things personally.

If you read my other blog posts, you would know by now that I read a lot. As explained in How I Became Wiser After Reading This One Book, I mainly gained wisdom from other people. I gain knowledge from books, videos and other people’s life stories. 

It’s one thing learning from other people’s experiences, and it’s another thing when you have to implement what you learned. In 2018, I learned about consciousness, the ego and the importance of meditating. 

However, in 2020, I realized that I became more emotional than ever. After my therapy sessions, I started opening up, and this lead to taking things personally. 

When you open up, you think that the person would understand you and pay attention to your emotions. However, things don’t work that way. People have their way of thinking. 

Today, I’m grateful that people have their own way of thinking or else I wouldn’t be able to grow. Throughout your growth journey, you will always struggle someway. I was struggling with not taking things personally. 

Imagine you’re vulnerable with someone, and they decide to check their phone while you’re talking. When someone doesn’t pay attention to you, especially during your vulnerability, you will think that the person doesn’t care about you. 

Taking the example above, you can use it to practice not taking things personally. That’s what I did. Even though you’re in your weakness, you have to keep in mind that it’s not about you. The person is probably looking at their phone because they’re waiting for an important phone call.

On the other hand, it is about you. You either have to tell yourself that you’re opening up to the wrong person and stay calm. Or, you let the person know how it’s making you feel when they look at their phone while you’re talking, without blaming them. 

The Ted Talk How to Not take things personally, explains this process better. It’s fascinating how many books I read shared the same techniques. 

You ultimately have to let people be. People do something for a reason, and you can either get in their shoes to understand why they did what they did. Or you open up to them and tell them how their actions made you feel. You have to control your emotions and take time to digest what just happened through empathy.

You have to be happy with yourself, and the rest will follow.

I once read on Quora a post about being single. The person, single, was explaining one thing that they learned about relationships while being single.

They explained that they had a friend that was about to get married, the friend’s boyfriend was about to meet the parents to make things official. His friend told him, “I love him. However, if he leaves me, I will still be happy.” 

Then, they explained their roommate’s love life. The roommate never spent more than ten days being single. They would be in a relationship, and once the relationship doesn’t work, they will find another partner. It continued until they settled for a toxic marriage. 

The main reason why the roommate settled for a toxic marriage was that they were not happy single. While the friend was happy single, they didn’t mind getting married to the person who treated them correctly.

Although I wrote about being happy single, the post on Quora made me realize that there’s no other way around it. Your happiness cannot depend on other people. You have to be satisfied with yourself, with your life, to be happy.

When 2020 started, I was happy with myself. I was single for two years then, and every day, I was getting to know more and more about myself. Suddenly, I gave a second chance at dating again. I learned so much from dating my boyfriend because, as a woman, it’s only natural to start loving someone else more than you love yourself.

After our ups and downs, I realized that there’s no other way to make myself happy. I had to prioritize my happiness before my boyfriend’s. That’s how you will know where to set boundaries and remain happy within the relationship.

In short, I learned the three life lessons throughout 2020. I am grateful for these life lessons. They connected to things that I’ve watched, experienced, and read recently. 

I hope that you too had many life lessons that you didn’t ignore. Because when you stop ignoring these lessons, you learn and implement what you know. I pray that in 2021, you start to live life to the fullest. 

Start loving yourself again; learn how to stay persistent in your goals. Learn how not to take things personally and be happy with yourself. 

I know that you had your life lessons. Feel free to share them with me in the comments below. Also, follow me on Instagram and DM me if you want to share your story privately.