5 Lessons Learned from 2020
Unless you were living under a rock, everyone learned a lesson personal to them during the pandemic year. It may have been a year of unprecedented hardship and trials, but in that darkness, there was growth.
I asked my readers what they learned over the year and compiled them below with a few thoughts of my own.
Take nothing for granted because anything can be taken away from you
Social events, places and tasks that were entwined within our daily lives were luxuries that we had. We didn’t realize it until they were taken away from us. Going to the hair salon, getting a workout in the gym, sitting at a cafe with a cup of coffee while you worked… All luxuries!
Coming to this realization myself, I appreciate everything that I do have as if it could be taken from me — or me from it. If it’s out of my control, I don’t let myself ruminate needlessly over it. If it’s something I can control and it improves the quality of my life or my work, then I owe it all of my attention, time, care, and gratitude that I can offer it.
Gratitude changes everything and can prevent a lot of emotional suffering
When I suggest gratitude journaling to people who tell me they need to work on their ‘mindset’, I sometimes get a lot of eyerolls because they’re not satisfied with my answer.
Actively working on looking for the good that’s already in your life (and doing it habitually) can make a profound difference in how you feel about yourself, how you think, and how you approach the world.
When you’re grateful for the life you already have, you don’t grieve over the things you don’t have or don’t have control over, which means you’ll have more mental energy to put in the work required for the things that you’d like to have.
The greatest rewards really are on the other side of tough times
Perseverance and diligence pays off in the end. Even if the outcome doesn’t turn out exactly how you wanted it to, you learned and grew along the journey there, and that in itself is a reward.
It isn’t possible for life to be smooth sailing the whole way through. There are going to be times when the road gets rocky, and whether you respond appropriately to adjust or react will make the difference on how you perceive the obstacles that get in your way.
The obstacle is the way — Ryan Holiday
A person who responds to tough times makes adjustments to make it work and come through in the end.
A person who reacts to tough times lets the tough times negatively affect their life and their hearts.
What’s for you already exists
In a society filled to the brim with advertisements telling you that you need more to feel whole, many of us fall prey to the notion that our happiness will come from external circumstances.
That is, in order for us to be happy and feel complete, we search endlessly for more. More gadgets and goods. More services. More subscriptions. More apps. More books. More, more, more.
Spoilers: that hole is infinitely gluttonous for external things. It can only be filled with introspection.
What’s for you already exists in your life, and no one and nothing outside of you can find that for you except for yourself.
“The more you realize, the more you realize there is nothing to realize. The idea that there’s somewhere we have got to get to, something we have to attain is our basic delusion.” Tenzin Palmo
Trying to be good at a lot of things is an excuse to avoid the hard work required to be great at one thing
I’ll be honest: this lesson was mine to learn! For the last 4 years, my time and attention has been scattered between too many interests, hobbies, and pursuits.
I was a writer and personal trainer first and foremost, but I also did web development, made videos and resources for clients, created social media posts, and tried to manage big, elaborate plans for a discord and facebook community.
By wanting to do all the things, I was bouncing around from thing to thing when I was interested in doing them. When my interest waned and I got bored, I’d drop it and go to the next most interesting thing.
Because of this, I was good at a lot of things, but I wasn’t great at any one of them.
So, I shed the unnecessary things to focus on the few I wanted to be really good at. I ditched the community plans and stopped dumping so much time into videos. This let me focus on writing and art to give my writing a more personal touch and to illustrate points that stock photos can’t. Please me know in the comments if you think it does!
Web development and social media are still necessary evils, but I can manage how long I spend on those things to focus on what that matter most to me.
Life can be unpredictable and hard, but through our trials can come unprecedented amounts of growth if we choose it. 2020 was a shock to our system, and a rude, but necessary wake-up call to grow up for some of us.
These 5 lessons are just the tip of the iceberg of experiences that people learned from 2020, but I hope you found something helpful amongst them.
What’s the most important lesson you learned in 2020? I’d love to hear your experiences withe the pandemic, so please leave a comment below!
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