A LISTICLE TO REMEMBER WHEN YOU TURN 30:

1) Our traditional and liberal selves can coexist. Sometimes, they will tear each other apart but gently remind them to live and let live.

2) Our Parents love us a lot. They are flawed old beings just like us. Let’s be kind to them and kinder to ourselves.

3) It’s important to flourish than just be happy. Our Suffering has a message. Let’s decode it by grace.

4) Therapy is essential, we need to break cycles, be less toxic and also learn to love ourselves more. Finding the right therapist is not easy but efforts towards the right direction will gift us efficiency.

5) More than that fancy face wash, it’s the good thoughts that make us glow and grow. But do use your face wash. Sometimes, it’s vice versa.

6) Self acceptance feels more like self validation. When you feel clueless, quickly make a list of around three to five easily doable steps. DO them and see how you feel.

7) A routine will save us. Pomodoro technique can help us on difficult days, it’s important to track our time, expenses and progress.

8) As we grow older, we have the agency to choose for ourselves. Let’s choose to read better firstly. Let the choice empower us and not confuse us.

9) We will lose some friendships and gain some experience. It’s all okay because you will know why losing is gaining sometimes.

10) It’s important to analyze the stories we tell us about ourselves and to others. Let’s do some reworking and editing with our narratives and see the magic that follows. (Write with your gut, erase it with your intuition and rewrite with kindness)

11) If you have siblings, love them a lot and don’t help them. Use all your energy to win through that sibling rivalry. Even your parents will only praise you if you end up victorious.

12) School or University won’t help us with our failures, ill health, rejections. Self education will make us strong.

13) May be we should never give up on our dreams but we must let go of our rigidity to make everything perfect. You wanted to make idlis this morning but the batter didn’t ferment completely because of the effing weather. You could eat some fruit and wait till noon. Or use some millet flour to mix up a quasi dosa. Either way you won.

14) Gratitude really works. But it takes consistency to make it work. If you struggle with consistency, like aforementioned let go the idea of perfection. Be grateful about the fruit or the quasi dosa.

15) Don’t prove anything to anyone. It’s all done before and nobody gives a grand damn. Left hand side is not equal to right hand side and therefore, I choose to use my calculator.

16) Fall in love with boys who cry but don’t make them cry.

17) Empathy with no boundaries will make you self sabotage. But what to do, your empathy is oozing out. We can ask our therapist about which inner child work tape to shut it with. (The tapes are decorative in nature and you might fall in love with them if you love stationery and of course therapy).

18) Prioritize your health. Sometimes you’ll have dreams of riding a horse but if your bum isn’t fit, you’ll have to ride an elephant and that’s okay too. In fact, Slow and steady will help you realize we were never in a race. You’ll know best what does healthy mean to you.

19) Love can neither be created nor destroyed but it can be converted into different forms of- Blessings, respect, Care, Excitement, fulfilment, warmth, happiness and joy. Love is always there, Let’s find it.

20) Don’t take to heart the meanness of the material world, just focus on the magnanimous aspects of the natural world around you.

21) There is always room for dessert but you have to make space to assert otherwise you’ll be hurt.

22) Talking about your failures is like eating a dark chocolate- Tastes bitter but good for your health.

23) Sharing your vulnerability with the right sort of people is Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

24) If you can’t be emotionally intelligent, at least be glad you are not belligerent.

25) Listen to the doctors, lawyers and teachers. Google can never replace them. Doing the right thing may not make you happy but like aforementioned, happiness isn’t the end goal.

26) Progress isn’t always linear. Sometimes you have to travel back in time to realize Great things take time.

27) Family the one given to you by the universe and the one you chose in the universe run on an equation. In order to balance this equation, you got to brush up the basics (Love, respect, loyalty, accountability and compassion) quite often. All of which stands on one mother value: Self-respect.

28) Give up on the idea that you can change people. It’s not our business, it’s not in our hands. Never give up on yourself because you can do you whenever you want to.

29) Life is unpredictable and tricky. What will keep us safe are our good intentions.

30) Age is just a number, truly. Sleep on time every day. Always remember to be hopeful. Harmony, Optimism, Peace and Education. An Acronym for HOPE.

Thirty and always worthy!