Seven Rules Of Life I Wish I Knew In My Twenties

Seven unlikely things you won't have thought of!

This week I was in the mood to do something a little bit different and since it’s my newsletter, I get to! How fun is that! We love being our own boss. I was reflecting on my twenties and thinking about how much I have changed and there were a few things that I feel like no one else really talks about. I could have put generic things like loving the way you look or having confidence in yourself but at the end of the day, whether you do it or not, you know these things so here are seven that you might not have thought about.

You Must Address Conflict Head On

When something upsets you and you have a tendency to people please or brush things under the carpet, you can tell yourself you are 'keeping the peace' but more often than not you are disrupting your own peace. The only way to resolve it is to address it and when you bring up issues, focus on two things. First of all tell them how you feel, this takes you away from making accusation or focusing on them and their behaviour and then the second part is to tell them what you need. This can be said using the sentence 'in the future' or 'It would really help me if'. We get happier by managing conflict better so that it consumes less of our life, not by avoiding it

You Need To Pay Attention To Your Emotions

We should never avoid our emotions as they tend to worsen the problems. Being hard on yourself for having emotions just ends up with compounded emotions because now you have the shame around the emotion that was originally asked to be addressed. Managing our emotions gets easier the more we do them and it's more about self-awareness so if you know you are going to have an emotionally intense conversation, pick the right time so you aren't distracted like at the weekend. Schedule in time for rest. Give yourself a duvet day. The best thing to do is to honour your emotional pain like a physical ailment. In the same way, you would with a physical issue, let yourself feel legitimate in the pain of emotional problems and cry it out. If you aren't a crier, finding a boxing class can also really help to let yourself express yourself or even just find a sad movie to cry to

You Need To Create Time For Boredom

We live in such a busy world that has constant demands on our time and energy and without time to rest and recuperate this puts us on the fast road to burnout. When we persist in this constant busyness, our mind often gets louder too and therefore creating time for mindfulness and letting your brain go quiet and exist without thinking is important. When you make time for this, not only will you find that you have more energy but you also will be able to sleep better at night because bedtime won't be the first time you have stopped all day. The way to do this is to schedule it in your diary as you would plans with a friend and then stick to it like how you commit to a meeting at work

Stop Going To Events You Don’t Want To Go To

The simplest way to do this is to actually ask yourself if you want to go before you say yes to the invite. We tend to look at our diaries and have a knee-jerk reaction in saying yes if there is space but just because you are technically available doesn't mean you should go. You do not have to be busy or have alternative plans to say no and it actually doesn't matter why you don't want to go, it just matters that you follow through and let the host know that you won't be coming. You don't have to provide a reason for your lack of attendance but to be respectful of the host who will need to know numbers, the more notice you can give, the better. And this should mean you won't have to make a last minute excuse the day of because you've realised how much you are dreading it!

Figure Out Who Is Draining Your Energy

Start looking at the relationships in your life and ask yourself which ones give you energy and which ones drain you. As an author, I started noticing that when I go for lunch with certain people, I would return to work ready and full of ideas flowing out of me. Other times, I would come home and I would need a nap. It was not the activity of going for lunch but more so whether the interactions were uplifting or draining and whilst it is easy to confuse that for people being positive or negative, it's rarely about that. Every human will have bad and good days but the things that tend to drain us are more when a person takes a lot in a conversation but doesn't give anything back or when someone persists in a conversation despite setting your boundaries. 

Maintain Your Healthy Habits Even In The Highs

So often we only put effort into creating good habits and a healthy routine when everything is going wrong. Once things pick up and they are going well, we are then quick to abandon them and we wonder why we end up on a rollercoaster of bouncing back and forth. If we can get in the habit of upkeeping healthy habits when we are up, life will still have it's ups and downs but we will be able to enjoy the ups more and manage the downs better and if we have more energy in the tank, it means we tend to be more resilient when facing life's difficulties

Make Room For Emotional Hangovers

An emotional hangover can occur when you've had an intense conversation or spent an evening crying and you wake up the next day feeling lethargic, heavy or drained. It can feel like a hangover in that you aren't 100% or in full form and that you feel quite heavy. Emotions not only take a toll on your body but they actually exist within our body so whether it's the stress of an argument triggering our adrenaline or fight/flight response or the pain and intensity of feeling your feelings, it can be draining and exhaust you. It doesn't even need to be something emotional, it can be something intense or high adrenaline like public speaking. It can be any event that the body perceives as stressful. You can't prevent emotional hangovers from happening, as much as you can deal with them better when they occur. Be gentle on yourself. Your brain likely won't be telling you the best things so the day after a big issue, don't believe your brain. Understand you are feeling a little fragile and be as compassionate as you can towards yourself. Ditto adrenaline crashes! Now if I have a big public speaking event, I will purposely keep the next day free (and even the next three if I can!) and I will tell myself to not believe my brain throughout it.