positivity

How A Wasted Life Can Become A Gift

I had my “mid-life crisis” at 34. 😹

At first, I didn’t realize what it was, because if you look up “mid-life crisis”, the internet tells you it’s a condition that “may occur from the ages of 45-64.”

But when you look at the symptoms, it’s basically around:

  1. having accomplished all your external goals like getting that job, buying that house, and having that family and you’re still not happy, or

  2. being at a certain age in life and you feel like you haven’t accomplished all that you have set out to.

I DEFINITELY felt elements of BOTH of these.

Despite achieving my goals of getting my PhD and a good-paying job at a great organization, I still wasn’t happy. Furthermore, I thought that by this age I would be further along in life by being married and having at least one kid already. So, I remember thinking, “Wow, most people feel this crisis in their 50s, and if I’m already feeling this at 34, then I must be a SUPER failure!”

The thoughts that I was a failure, that I wasted my time making wrong decisions in life, and that I was now stuck dealing with the consequences haunted me for a few years.

Even though I eventually came to terms with the fact that I was making the best decision I could with the information I had at the time, and that time wasn’t really wasted (it was for me to collect real data points about what made me happy or not), I still couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I still wasted my time somehow.

And this story—that I was someone who made wrong decisions, and someone who may waste time again with any new decision I made—was an emotional weight that kept me back from fully imagining a brighter future. It was a smudge in my lens preventing me from clearly seeing what was really possible for me. đŸ•¶

đŸ˜« How have you been punishing yourself for not being where you think you should be in life by now?

Do Self-Affirmations Actually Work?

If you've ever felt down and wanted to build yourself up, or you're generally in the self- or personal-development space, then you've probably heard about "affirmations" or "self-affirmations."

And they have either been life-changing for you đŸ€© or super annoying 🙄.

My own opinion about this straddles and alternates between the two. But, not one to just rest my thoughts on "opinions," I sought out to see what the science says about this.

So do self-affirmations work in helping you feel better and lift your self-esteem?

The answer is YES and NO, because it depends on what is meant by "self-affirmations," what kind of affirmations are being done, and the type of person doing the affirmation.

This post will get to the bottom of this to let you know what type of self-affirmations DO work, and when to stay away from them.