13 Life Lessons

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Hi there,

I don’t actually know the day I was born.

But I just had a birthday. Or at least, I celebrated one.

The truth is, the date isn’t real. January 1st is what I use. That’s what’s on the official paperwork. But I was born during a war, and details like birthdays weren’t being tracked. There were no baby books, no candles, no one circling a square on a calendar.

At some point later, a date had to be chosen so life could move forward in an orderly way.

I’ve always found that quietly meaningful. And over time, I’ve grown to like it.

The world treats January as a reset anyway, so my birthday has always felt like an alignment. A decent metaphor for life, really. Most of the time, we’re making things up as we go along. We decide what counts as a beginning or an end and put things in neat boxes where none existed. We tell ourselves stories about before and after, hoping they’ll give shape to something that feels bigger than we can hold.

Every year around this time, people take stock. They ask what they want, what they regret, what they’ll finally fix. I do something slightly different. I ask what’s held up under pressure. What’s stayed true even as time has endured and my preferences have changed.

Here are thirteen things that have stayed consistent across my decades on this planet, in no particular order.

Note that none of these are things I’ve mastered. I still practice them. I still forget them. Life keeps circling me back to the same lessons in different forms, and these are the ones I keep coming back to.

Take or leave whatever resonates.

1. You can be for yourself or against yourself. You decide.

The most overlooked relationship in our lives is the one we have with ourselves.

Not in an abstract way, but in the daily, moment-to-moment sense: the voice you use when you make a mistake, the way you speak to yourself when no one else is listening. Whether you stand in your own corner or quietly undermine yourself.

Most people are far harsher with themselves than they would ever be with someone they love. And if you listen closely, you’ll notice something else: that inner critic rarely sounds original. It borrows its tone from parents, grandparents, teachers, siblings— the people whose voices shaped us early on.

Taming it is a lifelong practice. But once you stop being against yourself, you can face the hard task of life a little easier. Being on your own side creates a positive feedback loop and it may be the most rewarding relationship you ever build.

2. “Should” is the root of most suffering.

The gap between what is and what we think should be is where a lot of pain lives. Reality doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t care about timing, fairness, or expectations. The more energy you spend arguing with what already exists, the more exhausted you become.

Acceptance of what is isn’t resignation. When you stop fighting reality, you get your energy back. And and only then can you decide what, if anything, you want to change.

3. Happiness is a choice you make.

For a long time, I believed someone or something would eventually arrive and make things easier. Whether it was the right job, the right relationship, the right home, the right city… I thought once I had it, that would be the moment when things finally clicked into place.

But it never did. Or when it did, the momentary high was short-lived. What’s is clear is that no external person, event, or circumstance suddenly makes you whole. Happiness and contentment is a daily choice you make.

Once that lands, it’s strangely freeing. You stop waiting. You stop outsourcing your life to the future.

4. You don’t need permission.

Don’t be the first to tell yourself no. Let the world tell you no first.

Most of the permissions we wait for are imaginary. Approval that was never promised. Validation that was never owed. We tell ourselves we’re being responsible, when really we’re being cautious in a way that keeps us stuck.

Stop being your own “no.” I’ve learned it’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.

5. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

You will not be remembered in 100 years. Or 1,000. Or 10,000.

This isn’t bleak. It’s liberating. Most things aren’t as grave or permanent as they feel in the moment. We assign enormous weight to minor moments and then wonder why everything feels heavy.

Lighten your grip. Laugh sooner. Very little is as serious as we make it. Superpowers you can choose today if you wanted:

- Ability to change yourself & your mind
- Not taking things personally
- Not needing to prove you're right
- Careful selection of all relationships
- Being alone without being lonely
- Being ok with being uncomfortable
- Thinking for oneself

6. You can’t change people. But you can affect them.

People are changed by people. Most of us can trace who we are back to a few encounters that left a mark: a teacher, a friend, a parent, even a stranger whose words lingered.

But there’s a limit.

You can’t make someone change. Even changing yourself is hard. Its a daily negotiation between intention, habit, fear, and effort. Real change resists force.

But you can influence. You can model. You can affect the environment. But you can’t save other people. Understanding this brings relief. You stop rescuing. You stop pushing. You learn the difference between care and control.

7. There is no such thing as a boring person.

Everyone has something uniquely strange, fascinating, or interesting about them, if you take the time to look for it. Curiosity is a skill. So is attention.

Most people aren’t dull. They’re just unseen. And when you approach others with genuine interest to mine their hidden gems, conversations flourish in delightful ways. Relationships deepen and you learn more than you expect.

Everyone can teach you something worth learning.

8. Both clarity & confidence follow action, not the other way around.

Waiting to feel ready is one of the most elegant ways to stay stuck.

“I’m waiting for clarity” often means “I don’t want to risk being wrong.” Preparation becomes a socially acceptable form of fear. But movement teaches you things thinking never will.

You don’t need a perfect plan. You need motion. Clarity arrives after you begin. And so does confidence. You have to get the messy, ugly reps in so might as well get going.

9. The more you avoid something, the more power it has over you.

Avoidance doesn’t make things disappear. It lets them grow in the dark. What you don’t look at or avoid starts to feel larger than it actually is.

Most things shrink once you face them directly. Fear loses leverage when it’s named. Discomfort loses its edge when it’s approached.

10. Consistency matters more than intensity.

Intensity makes for a good story. Consistency makes for good results.

Ninety percent of success can be boiled down to consistently doing the obvious thing for an uncommonly long period of time without convincing yourself that you're smarter than you are.

The things that shape your life rarely come from dramatic effort. They come from showing up again and again, especially when no one is watching. Intensity burns out. Consistency compounds.

11. Compounding is always at work, in both directions.

We tend to notice compounding only when it’s working in our favor. When small, consistent efforts finally pay off. When things start to look “successful” from the outside. But the same force is always at work, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Compounding is the quiet force shaping almost everything. It just adds up what you do repeatedly. And it works both ways.

A few days of junk food, missed movement, poor sleep don’t matter much on their own, until they repeat. The body changes slowly and quietly. The same is true with money. Small, careless spending compounds just as reliably as disciplined saving. Relationships too. Attention builds them. Neglect weakens them.

Small things matter because they add up, for better or worse.

12. Growth often costs you versions of yourself you once needed.

What protected you at one point may limit you later. Letting go of old identities can feel like loss, even when it’s necessary.

This is normal. Growth isn’t always additive, sometimes it’s subtractive. You outgrow coping strategies, dynamics, and versions of yourself that once made sense. That doesn’t mean something went wrong. It just means you’re growing and things are evolving.

13. The task of a lifetime is learning how to be yourself.

Not the polished version. Not the socially acceptable one. The real one underneath all the layers of social expectation and convention.

Shedding comfortable, familiar layers and having that kind of honesty takes courage. It’s quieter than achievement, less visible than success, but far more durable.

And it’s never finished…

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Final Thought

Again, I don’t have these figured out. I’m still practicing them. They aren’t conclusions so much as patterns I keep noticing as ideas life circles me back to, in different forms, over and over again.

That’s probably why I’ve always been drawn to Salvador Dalí.

Sometimes I think he overdoes it. And then I remember that humans rarely notice the truth unless it’s exaggerated enough to interrupt them. Dalí understood that. He was fascinated by time, how slippery it is, how strange it is, and how unreliable it can be.

I’ve been to his home in Spain and to the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, and what stayed with me wasn’t just the melting clocks everyone knows him for. It was his refusal to treat time as something clean or orderly. In his work, time stretches, sags, slips. It refuses to behave.

That feels honest to me.

My own birthday isn’t precise. My sense of beginnings never has been. Life, as I’ve known it, doesn’t move in clean chapters or obey calendars. It accumulates unevenly. Meaning shows up later, if at all.

So I pay attention to what endures. What keeps proving itself and doesn’t disappear with time.

Now, to you…

If you feel like replying, I’d genuinely love to hear from you. I read every reply. And I always respond.

That’s all for this week. Happy New Year, everyone.

See you next Sunday.

Shakila