Reminders That Will Guide You Through 2022
DESIGNECOLOGIST

Reminders That Will Guide Soft Hearts Through 2022

1. Failure is not the opposite of success. It’s a component of success. You can’t reach your dreams without creating an avalanche of mistakes first. Slipping up is unavoidable—which is why you should stop dwelling on your mistakes and focus on discovering new ways to endure, to push past the doubt telling you that you’re never going to make it, you’re wasting your time, you’re embarrassing yourself. Instead of running from failure, find fresh, fun, exciting ways to fail. After all, failure means you have agency. It means you’re putting yourself out there. You’re trying while so many others are existing with empty lives, resigned to their unhappiness. Embrace any outcome because even if you don’t reach success just yet, you’re slowly growing while the rest of the world is frozen in place.

2. You can’t let your gentle heart convince you to give them too many chances. If they slip up and make a genuine mistake, it might have been a harmless accident, a product of being an imperfect human being. But when they make the same mistake more than once, more than twice, it’s no longer an accident. It’s a conscious choice. They are choosing to hurt you. They are choosing to go against your best interests. They are choosing to disrespect your boundaries and disregard your expectations. Luckily, you can choose whether or not you stay, whether you want to put up with unbalanced treatment, whether you want to accept behavior that is beneath you.

3. You aren’t weak for calling it quits, for saying goodbye to aspects of your universe that are no longer serving you. It takes strength to walk away from an unsatisfying relationship or a strained friendship or a career your heart is no longer invested in. You should be proud of your fearlessness, your uncanny ability to face the unknown. It’s so much easier to accept the status quo, to complain about your current situation without twitching a finger to change it. In order to move forward stronger, you need to forget everything you were taught about quitting. It isn’t a negative, a sign of failure or incompetence. You should be proud of quitting when the alternative would only be prolonging your pain. You should be proud that you chose the toughest path, the route that was calling your name.

4. Never apologize for putting effort into the wrong relationship — even if your hard work wasn’t returned. Even if you ended up with your heart shattered on the pavement. Stop insisting that you were stupid for missing the signs, that you were pathetic for putting so much energy into a relationship that turned out one-sided. Instead of regretting the lengths you went to for someone you mistook as permanent, appreciate what your experience says about you. You see the best in everyone you encounter. You put one hundred percent of yourself into every undertaking. Just think, if you can do this much for the wrong person, imagine how much you can offer the right one.