20. Life is going to suck sometimes.

This is just a fact. No matter what you do or who you are, there are going to be times in your life, during which you feel like everything is falling apart and nothing is going right. I learned this pretty early on, but in having those experiences, you also learn how to push through them.

19. Not everything has to have a reason.

Unfortunately, sometimes things are going to happen that you don't really understand. This is just how life is. Sometimes bad things happen and there's really no reason for it, and with the world being made smaller than ever by the internet, it's easy to get bogged down mentally and spiritually by all of the senseless violence and horrible things in the world. I've learned to stop trying to make sense of things that don't follow a train of logic, and instead to focus my energy into making myself into the best person that I can be, and consequentially, making the world a better place for myself and others to live in.

18. The future is uncertain.

This can be both a good thing and a bad thing. In one sense, an uncertain future allows for endless possibilities. But, in the other sense, life's uncertainty can also make planning hard. There's no telling what will happen today, or tomorrow, or a year from now. This can cause a lot of anxiety with some people, myself included. But to get through this, just tell yourself that uncertainty does not equal instability. Sometimes surprises can be a good thing.

17. Try not to stress about what you can't control.

In that same spirit, I've learned in these twenty years that stressing about things that I can't control does nothing good for anyone. All that it does is make me feel terrible, which is not productive. So while my emotions may be completely valid and while stress is something that not everyone can effectively manage, when I can I try to ask myself this: Is there anything that you can do about this situation? If the answer is no, then there is no point in harnessing negative energy about it.

16. Loving yourself is hard sometimes.

This may not be true for everyone, but this is certainly true for me. Society constantly tells people who they should be and what they should believe, and even now as the world is moving in a more progressive direction, there is still an enormous amount of societal pressure for people to conform. If, like me, you don't match the cookie-cutter image of the perfect human by your society's expectations, loving yourself can be difficult. But it helps me to try to remember that differences are what makes the world so great, and that I am perfect the way that I am. Nobody else can be me, except me. And that's a special thing.

15. Taking care of yourself is not a crime.

I truly don't think that self-care is valued enough in this society, especially as far as young people are concerned. There is this culture of 'powering through' which means that basically no matter what happens to you or how bad things are, there is a pressure to 'take it with grace' and 'silent dignity'. I call bullshit. You're allowed to have emotions. You're allowed to take care of yourself. You're allowed to admit that you need help, or that you're struggling. Refusing to do so just causes things to build up and severely affects one's health.

14. Listen to yourself.

Sometimes what you've always thought isn't actually the truth. Sometimes it's a person that you thought was great, but isn't. Sometimes it's a core belief or a cultural tradition that you no longer believe in. Maybe it's knowing that you can't handle putting anything else on your plate, but feeling the need to try to do it anyway. This goes along with taking care of yourself; learn to tune everybody else out, and make decisions that are right for you.

13. Be unapologetic about your needs.

After you've done some soul-searching and you figure out what you need to be happy and healthy, DON'T APOLOGIZE FOR IT! You don't owe anybody an apology for doing what's best for you. The only person you should be answering to is yourself.

12. Other people are people too.

At the same time, being unapologetic does not mean being rude or inconsiderate. There is a way to voice your needs to others without invalidating their needs or desires as well. For example: if you can't do something that somebody asks you to do, you could politely decline, rather than leaving them hanging last minute or shooting them down in a humiliating or just plain rude way. There's no shame in living for yourself, but in that you also have to remember that the world doesn't revolve around you, and that other people's feelings and experiences are just as valuable as yours are.

11. Listen to others.

While I've been stressing the importance of self-care and following your own path, it's also true that sometimes you need to listen to others. Whether that be for social cues about how to treat them, or asking for advice that you can't see for yourself, it is important to draw wisdom not only from within, but from others whose experiences may be different or more varying than yours. In the end you make the final call, but sometimes allowing other people to weigh in is good too.

10. Family doesn't mean blood.

While I do love my biological family very much, I've found through the years that everyone has the ability to choose their family. When I moved away from home and went to college, I met people that I grew close to, who came to understand me in ways that nobody ever had before. And that's okay. It doesn't make my relationships with my biological family any less valid or important, because I need both kinds of familial love. And for others who may not have such a strong biological family, the earlier that they allow others to be there for them, the better. I have several friends now that match this description, and once they let go of the idea that they couldn't rely on others because they weren't what society deemed as 'family' they were a lot happier.

9. People come and go.

That being said, every relationship has its time and place. People come in and out of your life, and whether the relationship ends due to death or simply due to growing apart or moving away, you have to be able to accept that a relationship ending doesn't mean the end of the world. People that I met in elementary school that I stayed friends with all throughout high school don't even speak to me anymore, and I'm okay with that. I can look at how they helped me grow as a person, for the better and for the worse, and accept the relationship for what it was. In my case, most of my pre-college relationships were simply a way to cope and get through high school. They helped me learn my social cues, and what I should and shouldn't do as a friend. A lot of people also struggle with romantic relationships and learning to let those go, but for me it helps to focus on what I learned from my time with a person, rather than what I'm missing out on after the end of a relationship. I like to view relationships as a cycle, rather than a straight line. People come, people go, and sometimes the people that left will come back and maybe even leave again. Nothing is forever, and letting go of the concept that people have to be permanent to be important or beneficial has helped me a lot with my relationships to others.

8. Don't be afraid to cut poisonous people off.

This lesson took me a really long time to learn, and kind of came around the same time as my last point. One I learned that it's okay for relationships to end, I began to question the relationships in my life. Who made me happy? Who didn't? For those in my life that didn't make me happy, I asked myself why. And then I addressed my issues with those people, and if they were unwilling to work through our issues or change habits, then I cut them off. No shame. Sometimes even if you care for a person, you've got to learn to cut ties and let them go because keeping them around will hurt you more than it will help you. That's okay. As I've been saying, you owe nothing to anybody but yourself.

7. Nobody gets anywhere alone.

It may sound like I'm contradicting myself, but just hang in there. Once you've found who you are and what you need, weeded out the negative influences, all that remains are people that help you be who you want to be, or make you happy. For me, these people make me into a better version of myself. They challenge me, they show me new things, and they motivate me to want to do well for myself and to be a better person. Without the people that I consider my family, I don't know where I would be. There have been plenty of times when I fell down and would not have been able to get up by myself. There have been plenty of times during which I didn't even realize how much was being done for me. To this day, I'm sure that I haven't given enough thanks to all of those who have helped me get to where I am today. I didn't accomplish what I'm doing with my life alone. Nobody ever has.

6. The big picture is a lot less stressful.

Thinking of the big picture always helps me to feel better when I feel like my life is spiraling out of control. These days it's really easy to get swept up in a fast-paced life and find yourself getting caught up on things that seem really important in the moment, but actually are not in the grand scheme of things. Relationships, a singular test, a current situation, and things to the like that a lot of us allow to ruin our days, our weeks, and our months become a lot less detrimental when you ask yourself whether or not this will matter a year from now, five years from now, or for the rest of your life.

5. The world is often a lot more infinite than we realize.

Another thought that helps me find happiness in my life is the idea that our universe is infinite. There is so much that science cannot explain, so many different beliefs and ways of life, so much that we are not aware of, and so much that we as a race cannot even conceptualize. Even within our reality, there are differences in experience. For example, words in one language that cannot be translated or explained in a second language. There are so many possibilities that we can't even list all of them. When I think about my world in this context, I feel a sense of peace because I realize that nothing really matters. So, I might as well live to make things better and make myself happy.

4. The point of life is to embody happiness.

This may be more of an acquired belief than a lesson that I've learned, but it is something that I've learned about myself. My goal in life is to embody happiness, and to spread peace and love to the world. I want to be the kind of person that others feel good around, that it known for good energy and good works, and that leaves the world a better place than where it was when I came in. Learning this about myself has helped me to better guide myself, and motivates me against giving up even when things get hard.

3. Opening your mind is hard, but worth it.

I know far too many people that find a comfortable place in their lives, and then stop. I firmly believe that stagnancy is a waste of life. If you're not constantly learning, developing, creating, or changing, then why are you even here? As long as there are injustices in the world, as long as there are new discoveries to be made, as long as there are pieces of yourself that you haven't developed, hobbies you haven't tried, skills you haven't learned ... why would you ever stick to thinking just one way, or doing just one thing? Challenge is the essence of purpose.

2. Hard work pays off.

Pushing yourself may be hard, but if you really work, I promise that it will pay off. Does that mean that if you work hard that you'll always get what you want? No. Unfortunately, you can do everything within your power and things still might not work out how you wanted them to. But that's okay. Because even if you don't see the good in a situation, you probably learned something. Or maybe what you wanted, somebody else needed more. Or maybe what you thought you wanted wasn't what you really needed. Whatever the case, as long as you try and give your all one hundred percent of the time, I firmly believe that you will always have what you need to get through.

1. Breathe.

When all else fails, just breathe. Take a few minutes to yourself, let your emotions calm down, and reevaluate yourself and the situation. This is one of the most valuable lessons that I've learned. I have been through so much in my life, but none of it killed me. None of it caused the end of the world. A lot of things were terrible, but a lot of my reactions just made things worse. So, instead of allowing myself to get caught-up and letting my emotions control my judgement, I've learned to step back and just breathe. Our bodies do it naturally, without thought. But sometimes, learning to get back to that basic instinct solely, even just for a few moments makes all of the difference in the world.