Life is not a race

Things I Wish I Understood Earlier

There are so many things I wish I had understood earlier in life. Not because knowing them would have changed everything, or meant that I would have avoided the difficult seasons, the wrong turns, the heartbreak, the uncertainty or the moments when I felt completely lost, but because perhaps I would have been a little kinder to myself along the way. I would have understood that life isn’t something we are supposed to have completely figured out by a certain age, and that there is no deadline for becoming the person we want to be. Sometimes we spend so much of our lives believing that we should be further ahead, doing more, achieving more, knowing more and becoming more, when perhaps what we really need is to slow down and listen to what our life is trying to tell us.

You don’t have to figure out your whole life this year.

I think we put an enormous amount of pressure on ourselves to have a plan. We want to know where our career is going, what our relationships will look like, where we will live, what we should be doing next and whether we are making the “right” decisions. We convince ourselves that if we could just work out the perfect plan, everything would finally feel certain. But life rarely works that way. Sometimes you only need to know the next step, not the entire path. You are allowed to change your mind, discover something new about yourself, take a different direction or realise that the life you thought you wanted isn’t actually the life that feels right anymore. You don’t need to have the next ten years mapped out. Sometimes getting through this season, taking care of yourself and figuring out what comes next is enough.

Being busy doesn’t always mean you’re growing.

We live in a culture that can make exhaustion look like success. Being constantly busy can feel productive, and sometimes it is easier to keep filling our days than to stop and ask ourselves whether we are actually moving towards the life we want. We can be busy answering emails, working, organising, achieving, helping everyone else and ticking things off our lists while quietly becoming more disconnected from ourselves. Growth doesn’t always look like doing more. Sometimes growth looks like saying no, setting a boundary, resting, asking for help, leaving something that no longer feels right or finally admitting that you are tired. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is stop long enough to hear yourself again.

The right people will never make you feel difficult to love.

There is a difference between being imperfect and being made to feel like your needs are a problem. The right people won’t make you constantly question whether you are too much, too sensitive, too emotional, too complicated or too needy. They won’t make you feel as though you have to shrink yourself to keep them comfortable. The people who are meant to be in your life will not expect you to become someone else in order to be worthy of their love. Of course, healthy relationships still require communication, compromise, accountability and growth, but you should never have to continually abandon yourself to keep someone else. Being loved should not feel like a constant audition where you are desperately trying to prove that you are easy enough to keep.

Your body hears everything your mind says.

We can be incredibly harsh with ourselves, often saying things internally that we would never dream of saying to someone we love. We criticise our bodies, our choices, our appearance, our mistakes and everything we think we should have done differently, and then wonder why we feel exhausted. Our bodies carry so much of what we experience, and learning to speak to ourselves with compassion is not about pretending everything is wonderful or ignoring the things we want to change; it is about recognising that we deserve kindness while we are changing. Your body has carried you through every difficult day you’ve ever experienced. It deserves a little more gratitude and a little less criticism.

Rest more gently.

Rest doesn’t have to be something you earn after you have finished everything on your list, because there will always be another email, another job, another responsibility and another thing that could be done. If you wait until everything is finished before you allow yourself to rest, you may never actually rest. Sometimes rest is lying down without feeling guilty. Sometimes it is doing nothing productive at all. Sometimes it is taking a quiet morning, turning your phone off, cancelling something you don’t have the energy for or simply giving yourself permission to stop. Rest is not laziness, and needing rest doesn’t mean you are failing. You are a human being, not a machine.

You are allowed to start again as many times as you need.

There is something incredibly freeing about realising that starting again isn’t failure. We can spend so much time worrying that we’ve wasted time, made the wrong decision or gone too far down the wrong path that we become afraid to change direction. But you are allowed to begin again at twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty or beyond. You can change careers, leave relationships, make new friends, rediscover old passions, learn something completely new or decide that the person you used to be isn’t the person you want to be anymore. Starting again can be brave. Sometimes it is the bravest thing you can do.

Not everyone needs access to your energy.

As we grow older, I think we become more aware of how precious our energy actually is. Not every argument needs your response. Not every person deserves an explanation. Not every relationship needs to be maintained simply because it has existed for a long time. You are allowed to have boundaries around your time, your attention and your emotional energy. Protecting your peace doesn’t mean you don’t care about people; it means you have finally realised that you cannot pour endlessly from an empty cup. You can love people and still create distance. You can care about someone and still say no. You can be kind without making yourself endlessly available.

Small routines can change your life more than motivation.

Motivation is wonderful when it arrives, but it is unreliable. There will be days when you feel inspired and ready to change everything, and there will be other days when getting through the day feels like enough. The small things we do consistently often matter far more than the huge changes we attempt when we are suddenly motivated. Going for a walk, drinking enough water, getting outside, writing in a journal, making your bed, taking a few minutes to breathe, going to bed a little earlier or creating a simple morning routine may not feel life-changing in the moment, but over time these small acts can become the foundation of a very different life. You don’t always need a dramatic transformation. Sometimes you simply need small things that you can keep doing.

You are not late.

This is perhaps one of the hardest things to truly believe when it feels as though everyone around you is moving forward. Someone is getting married, someone is having children, someone is buying a house, someone is travelling, someone is being promoted, someone is starting a business and someone else seems to have completely figured themselves out. It is so easy to look sideways and decide that you are behind. But there is no universal timeline for a human life. Your journey is not supposed to look exactly like someone else’s. Some people find their purpose early. Others discover it later. Some people build careers in their twenties and change direction in their forties. Some relationships arrive early and some arrive when you least expect them. Some dreams take years to become possible.

You are not late. You are living your life.

And perhaps that is the biggest thing I wish I had understood earlier: growing takes time, and that’s okay.

We are constantly encouraged to improve, achieve, heal, change and become, but sometimes we forget that becoming a different version of ourselves is not supposed to happen overnight. Healing isn’t linear. Growth isn’t always visible. Some seasons are about moving forward, while others are about simply holding yourself together and getting through. There may be times when you feel as though nothing is happening, only to look back months or years later and realise that you were changing quietly all along.

So if you are currently questioning where you are in life, wondering whether you should be further ahead or feeling as though everyone else has worked something out that you haven’t, take a breath.

You don’t have to have it all figured out, to be constantly productive, to keep giving your energy to everyone. You don’t have to stay the same person simply because other people are comfortable with who you used to be. You are allowed to rest, to change, to begin again, to take your time.

Your life is not a race, and you are not behind.

Love, Michelle