Hello friends and family. Welcome to another episode of Z trying to navigate life. Do you ever measure your progress in life? If yes, what's your way of doing it? If not, why not? I measure my progress in life by journaling. I write about my goals, personality, likes/dislikes, and more.
I noticed that my priorities and preferences have changed over time a lot. Some people hate change but I love change. I find change to be a very positive term. When I hear the word change, I also hear the words "improvement", "upgrade", and "adaptable". A couple of examples of change includes moving to a brand new place, trying something new, or as simple as waking up early. But if you find yourself uncomfortable with the word change, stick through the article because I will pinpoint several examples that might ease you into this new dimension of growth.
Let's get into it.
Change Over Time
Do you know what's crazy? As I'm growing up, I realize I don't care about many things anymore.
What matters now is if I'm happy, my family is comfortable, and some of my close friends are happy. Growing up brown, I always felt like life was a competition. Going for a Computer Science degree didn't help with that. Everybody around me was always competing and never trying to help other people to become successful collectively. Little petty things used to matter, and now it's like if someone bothers me, I block them, lol. Or tell them that they are annoying and my time is too precious for them.
I didn't believe in this, but people change over time. Their core values and actions may not, but you can see a change in them. We learn and adapt from our environment and become a product of it. That's why many of us have a lot of irrational fears and traumas forwarded to us from our parents. No one took the time to resolve the conflicts for the sake of avoiding the arguments, and now, here we are, twenty-something years later, trying to figure out in $150/hour therapy sessions what's wrong with us.
Please, don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to mock or degrade therapy at all. In fact, I'm encouraging you to go to one if things don't make sense in your head. All I'm saying is that if we all had the guts to educate and talk about some issues with our friends and family from an early age, we would be in a much better place.
Why Are We Afraid of Change
I have many friends and family members who are afraid of change. They are scared of starting over or trying new things because the ambiguity scares them. One of the most simple and best quotes I read goes like this "You don't grow when you're comfortable". If you're scared and unsure about what will happen, you're doing the right thing. Some of these people at work have been with the same company for thirty or forty years. This is my worst fear. I never want to be in the same place for this long. Because I'm not adaptable to my environment anymore, I'm just stuck in my ways and too comfortable with where I am in life.
In Conclusion
If you are afraid of starting something new because you don't want to fall behind your peers, remember, life is not a competition. I have had this thought multiple times. One example was me skipping school for a year and a half and not graduating with all my friends. I was upset about it for quite some time. I was supposed to be class of 2020, but guess what happened in 2020? Corona. The job market crashed. Many of my friends enrolled in a Master's degree or delayed graduation. For me, it was all part of my plan. I graduated in such a better place and with experience. Things started making sense, and I stopped comparing myself to people.
I hope you gained some valuable knowledge today, and if you did, don't forget to like this post 💞
Till next time, Peace✨
A question for Gen Z blog:
How do you get comfortable with being alone? And also moving out, that feels like such a daunting task how do you live on your own?