I’ll be 36 in February and sometime last year life got really zen. Highmark laid me off after 9 and a half years and I felt slighted as I worked harder than I ever worked just to be laid off in a group Teams meeting. But I digress, responsible delusion has been good for me. If I can’t fix it right now, I’m not worried about it right now. Once I aligned to that level of thinking and made sure that the things I was chasing aligned with my personal mission statement, life got calmer. Sure, things don’t go my way sometimes. Still, I always ask myself how breaking down or lashing out makes a situation better and it usually doesn’t so I just chalk up bad experiences as great writing material. There are so many things that got me to this point and I’m proud of the woman that I’ve become as I’ve witnessed that some people grow older but they never emotionally mature. Growing older is mandatory but growing wiser is optional. Once I learned to navigate life by knowing myself and asking myself a series of questions before immediately reacting, I’ve been proactively protecting my peace.

I got comfortable and secure with myself and I lost friends because they didn’t like the comfortable secure growth I never saw that coming but it’s necessary. Friendship breakups are almost more painful than relationship breakups. I’ve also learned that time spent on a friendship doesn’t supersede the quality of friendships. Sometimes you meet people and they understand you and your boundaries and you don’t realize that because they haven’t known you all your life but it feels like they have. Keep those people that feel like home around because home changes but feelings usually don’t.

The pandemic wired my brain completely differently as I give others grace but most importantly I also give myself grace. I can’t be everything for everyone if I don’t check in on myself.

I also don’t attach my self-worth to corporate America anymore. If I have a job, great. If I don’t, also great. I’ve been laid off twice and I’ve learned that I can do an amazing job for a corporation and still be expendable as while I was at Highmark I pretty much trained a team in India to do my job before getting laid off.

My favorite 35-year-old me flex is knowing my flaws and embracing them. Some of them are physical like my cellulite and the fact that I gained ten pounds during Covid. And I guess if weight and wisdom are two things I gained out of covid I’m good. I’m also an expert at procrastination, I’m a recovering people pleaser, and I know how to harness my hyper focus. When people attempt to say bad things about me I just nod, and shrug it off as I’ve taken inventory of my flaws. I’m not looking to be perfect and usually, when people try to pick other people apart they have something going on with themselves. I don’t argue with people I just nod and thank them for their criticism because, at the end of the day, my relationship with myself is the most important one because it sets the foundation for every relationship afterward and I wish I would’ve figured that out sooner rather than later.

I don’t know what they say that your 20s are. I made lots of mistakes in my 20s. Apparently, they were good mistakes because they got me to this point of Zen. My 30s are everything that I want them to be because by this point I’ve built boundaries, I don’t expect me behavior from others, and I lean into the butterflies to keep challenging myself as challenges build growth.

The sooner that you get to know yourself though, life gets clearer as it’s much harder to battle the world when you’re also at war with yourself.

No matter what situation or setting you find yourself in, you don’t ever want to depend on anything—or any other person—to make you feel in control and comfortable. That sense of confidence should always come from within. Not from an external source. 50 Cent; Hustle Harder