2022 is officially here. It’s about time to pause and reflect on the biggest lessons from 2021 to help us prepare for the new year. 

Here are the 21 lessons: 

• Love yourself  – Loving yourself is very essential to your happiness, your relationships and your life. You are the only person that you will be spending most of your time with so it’s important that you learn how to like and love yourself. 
• Be You – There will always be people who are better than you, more talented, more beautiful, more successful. But you have your own strengths and abilities – and you are here in the world for a reason.

• Focus on opportunities, not problems – Problems will always be part of our life. It’s normal to have them, and sometimes they’re inevitable. 

• Creative visualization works – Creative visualization is a technique that turns your dreams into reality. When you repeat things over and over again, they get registered in your subconscious and you tend to gravitate towards them.

• Learn to listen first – Listening is an act of empathy – it’s trying to see the world from another person’s eyes. It’s being authentically curious about someone else’s life and allows us to be present with them.

• Take full responsibility for your life – Your life is 100% your responsibility. Even when things go wrong, when our plans are not working – instead of blaming the circumstance for our failures (which we don’t have control of),  take full responsibility for your actions. 

• Care less about what other people think – While it’s completely natural for us human beings to care about others, to seek validation, to try to get approval from people because we need to have that sense of “belongingness” and it’s important that we stay away from comparison with another. We are unique. 

• Health is wealth – As cliche as this might sound – good health is truly priceless. 

• It’s fine to not have all the answers now – Whether we lost our job, a long term relationship, an amazing opportunity – at the beginning, while we are in that situation it won’t make sense. 

• Protect your energy – What we continually send out, whether it’s a negative or positive energy either through our thoughts or feelings – we will eventually attract that same energy back to us.

• Appreciate the little things – We are blessed with a lot of good things in life. The flowers in the park, the cuddle of our dogs, the water that we drink – and the roof over our head. 

• Learn to say No – whenever you say yes to something, you also say NO to something else. Be careful! 

• Rejection is a redirection – Rejection hurts a lot. Whether we didn’t get hired to the company that we want or we got turned down by our friends – it’s hard to accept at that very moment of rejection –  things are just not meant to be. 

• Don’t wait to take action – The best way to get ahead is to get started. 

• Your habits make you  – Creating a healthy habit everyday and sticking to it allows us the space to feel good – and helps us build on positive thoughts throughout the day.

• Comparison steals our joy – we have different strengths and weaknesses, the same as everyone else. When we start comparing ourselves to others, we take away that feeling of joy and happiness of what we are capable of doing.

• Measure progress, not perfection – It’s so easy to succumb into perfectionism. But perfection is not achievable, and most of the time would just make us feel doubtful and disappointed in ourselves. When we focus on progress, we focus on making gradual steps forward.

• Be selective with your friends – who you are with is who you become.

• Forgive yourself often – Forgiveness is important in the healing process as it allows us to let go of emotions that are holding us back.

• One thing at a time – Do not feel the pressure to do a lot of things all at once.

Trust the timing of your life – Life is not a competition. Your pathway is different than anyone else’s.