Although I have had several friends throughout my life, there was one particular time when I didn’t have (close) friends, especially when I would have appreciated it the most. My childhood was rough for several reasons, and that led to me feeling so alone in this world at times, even with friends. Luckily, I didn’t have many child experiences of being friendless. It was thanks to my difficult experiences in middle school with bullying andread more

Early into my personal development journey, I heard this saying that you are the average of the five people that you spend your time with. I didn’t really question it; I thought it made a lot of sense. And I also heard/read a lot of self help content that pointed to being very cautious about the people you surround yourself with. Make sure they’re a team of A players. Make sure they’re people whose lifestyleread more

If you go on a heart-aligned path and you come across a situation where your inner compass is going off on a tangent, do you take it? What if it violates other people’s expectations? Violating expectations is not the same as violating boundaries. (And seriously, fuck anyone who violates boundaries consciously and willingly– you’re trash.) Violating expectations is about going against what is considered “normal” or “acceptable” because you know intuitively that it is right.read more

scrabble tiles that spell out commit or quit

As a former mentally gifted kid, I had a serious issue with procrastination, mostly due to perfectionism, which stemmed from unaddressed emotional needs (e.g. not having a safe learning space, coming from abuse/trauma, unreasonable expectations set by supervising adults, etc.). Nowadays, they have an umbrella term for such cases called “twice exceptional” or 2e for short. I was interested in so many different subjects, but I lacked confidence and withdrew a lot as I wasread more

I think it’s quite normal for people to have their own set of standards. Everyone’s different. I think as long as it’s not harming someone else, then it’s fine. For example, some people have certain standards for romantic relationships. These could be related to appearance, religious beliefs, personality traits, education levels, etc. It’s interesting because some people think that they need to control other people’s standards. I think it’s okay to challenge people’s ideas, butread more

One decision I made based on someone’s reputation was to restrict them on Instagram. They had a reputation of messaging daily, usually the same questions, and always expecting a reply. So first, I limited their interactions. And then when I posted something, they left several angry comments. Seeing this to be a pattern of their behavior (constantly demanding attention from me), I blocked them. Had they not messaged me daily from the beginning and leftread more

Many times in life, we are faced with the difficult decision of whether we can trust somebody or not. Some people trust quite easily. Others are guarded and rarely trust others, securing themselves in an imagined box. My rule is to build up trust in blocks. When you meet someone for the first time, it’s probably not a good idea to share your whole life story in one go. It’s best to get to knowread more

Our minds have a way of concluding how people are and how they live based upon our own experiences. This happens because our minds like to predict outcomes and not to lie in ambiguity. In a way, we’d like to be able to read people’s minds and learn how to filter out our connections based on the kinds of interactions we’d love to have. However, if we are not careful, we can conclude the wrongread more

There are many ways to invest money. But, have you ever thought of all the ways in which you can invest in yourself? Especially nowadays with all the opportunities present for us, we can invest time, money, and effort into ourselves to produce awesome results. Those results are not merely just monetary gains, but personal growth gains. The more you invest in yourself, the better the outcomes. Some people have limiting beliefs surrounding money. Theyread more

We all have parts of our past that we wish we could forget. One thing you have to realize is that you are not alone, and there are ways to forget your past and move on. The first thing you should make sure to do is examine your past and see if there is a lesson there that you could learn from. If you’re suffered from an abusive relationship, you could take it as aread more