23 things that 23 taught me

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Happy Sunday and you deserve a cookie for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter - thank you!

Guess what - in 2 days, it’s my BIRTHDAY! 🎂 

It feels like just a few weeks ago I was writing to you telling you that it was my birthday, talking about tackling the learning curves of life and here we are again, one year later already! And I guess to be fair, when I wrote that blog post (yes, it was a blog post, not a newsletter at that point), there were less than 100 of you subscribed. Now we have over 1000! WHAT!? Talk about a great birthday gift.

Reflecting on the past year

As you know, my newsletter is a reflective space and also somewhere that I publicly document and share aspects of my life week over week. So what better way to celebrate my birthday this week than to reflect on the year that I’ve had at age 23?

In the past year, so many things have happened that have helped me to get to where I am today. Thankfully, I have a weekly archive of #TheLifeofJLOWE right here to help me to reflect and share my biggest lessons with you today.

So without further ado, here are 23 things that I learnt at age 23:

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The 23 things I learnt at age 23

1. Speak up for yourself because nobody else will
   Raise your hand when you want something, speak up when you’re being wronged and don’t suffer in silence. Only you know how you feel and if you don’t express it, you can’t expect others to magically know.
   

2. It’s okay to be a beginner (and absolutely suck) at something as an adult
   Don’t feel embarrassed to try something new. Even if it means failing in public. When you finally improve and succeed nobody but you will remember how long it took you to get where you are or how hard it was.
   

3. Being alone can be a good thing
   As an extrovert, this is a new life lesson. Meditating, reading, walking alone and just appreciating the world around you is just as important as being around other people.
   

4. Everything in life is about consistency
   Overnight success is for the super lucky. Don’t depend on going viral. Build and work in silence overtime, fall in love with and stay committed to the process.
   

5. You can celebrate New Year’s whenever you want (not just January 1)
   You can start a new chapter in your life at any point in time. You don’t need permission, nor do you need it to be a certain time of year. Life’s happening now. Start over now if you need to.
   

6. Be kind to yourself always (how you talk to yourself is important)
   Never talk about yourself negatively. How you perceive yourself is vastly more important than how anyone else perceives you, and you’re in charge of how you view yourself. Talk to yourself nicely in all aspects of life.
   

7. You have to learn to become comfortable with being uncomfortable
   Try new things, be a beginner and show up even when you feel a little uncomfortable. It’s okay to be uncomfortable at the start, and trust me - the discomfort will go away quickly as you settle in.
   

8. Rest is just as productive as work
   Sleep is so important to functioning properly. If you want to take a nap and you can, take it!
   

9. Quitting might just be the life strategy you’re missing
   Sometimes it’s better to give up than to persevere. This is antithetic to everything society teaches you with hustle & grind culture, but as you become more comfortable with re-directing yourself and pivoting, you’ll realize how important it is sometimes to give up and try something else.
   

10. The world is so much bigger than you think it is
    Travel as much as possible. There’s so much to see and so much to experience. And in the same vein, the world is so much smaller and interconnected than it seems too.
    

11. You have to believe in your own ability to be successful
    Do what you love, and chase after your passions, always believing that you can be successful pursuing whatever you set your mind to.
    

12. Root and reground yourself in your home, family and childhood friends when you need new energy and don’t know where to turn
    There’s nothing like returning to your roots to ground yourself and feel more like yourself. Appreciate the people that you can call home.
    

13. Success can take many different forms, think deeply about how you define it for yourself
    If you don’t define what success means for yourself, you might end up chasing someone else’s definition of success and when you achieve it, you won’t be fulfilled.
    

14. If you don’t do what you want to do, you’ll end up doing what somebody else wants you to do.
    Read this one again.
    

15. Your network is your net-worth. Relationships are everything in this life so invest in them more than anything
    Sometimes you need to prioritise yourself, but other times you should prioritise building relationships with others. People make the world go round. 
    

16. If you feel a bit scared before a big life decision, that’s a good thing. A little bit of fear is healthy.
    An Italian friend of mine told me this a few months before I quit (s/o Fede). If you don’t feel fear with a big decision, it’s not that big of a decision. A little bit of fear is healthy, it’s how you deal with the fear that matters.
    

17. You have to allow yourself time to heal after painful things happen
    Be patient with yourself, check in with how you feel and take care of yourself. We don’t heal from things in a day or a week, it can take months or years. Recognising that allows you to give yourself grace to feel emotions and process them in a healthy way.
    

18. If you’re doing the same thing that everyone else is doing, you might be doing something wrong
    If you’re on the side of the majority, check yourself. It’s not always a bad thing, but sometimes it can mean that you’re being a sheep and not thinking for yourself.
    

19. Don’t waste time when making decisions that aren’t hard to reverse.
    Develop a bias to action, remember the 51% rule on decision making.

20. Happiness isn’t found in achievements, it’s found in the journey to the achievement
    Don’t get wrapped up in the outcome of your training. Love the training process and results will follow.

21. Failure is feedback, feedback is knowledge and knowledge is power

    In the same way that you have to define success for yourself, defining failure for yourself is important too. Define it as power. Failure is power.
    

22. Don’t take growth for granted. Just because you’re getting older doesn’t mean you’re getting better

    Be intentional about how you spend your time. Learn something new everyday intentionally, don’t just wait for it to happen.
    

23. Everything is a projection, don’t take the opinions of others too seriously
    Opinions are based on individual lived experiences. No two people have the exact same experiences, so take opinions with a grain of salt and always remember where that person is coming from.

And one for good luck:

24. If you wouldn’t take advice from them, don’t take criticism from them.
If they don’t have what you want, they can’t give you what you want.
We’ll talk more about this one next week 😉 

Conclusion

Writing a newsletter every week is great to reflect week over week, but even more so, it’s an amazing way to look back at my thoughts months or years ago, and take lessons from my own life experiences.

Many people around me know this, but I love writing things down. If I hear a song lyric I like, I’ll write it down. If I hear a quote I like, I’ll do the same thing.

Our brains are awesome, but they do well with a bit of help. Writing this newsletter has made me realize that I can learn a lot from myself, and I’ve already solved a lot of the problems that I’m experiencing now and will experience in the future, but sometimes they show up in different ways.

It’s like a math problem that tests the same concept but is asked in different words. You just gotta go back into the basic life strategies and use what you already know.

It’s kind of surreal to be able to write this newsletter today and link back to so many articles from the past year. I’ve been building this archive over time, one week at a time, and to see how consistency has paid off is such a huge lesson in and of itself.

So this week I’m celebrating 24 years, and I’m happy to be able to look back on my 23rd year and say that I’ve grown as a person and have a lot of growth ahead of me. I think 24 is gonna be my year. (I say this every year, because every year is a new opportunity to be better).

But cheers to 24! 🍾 🥂 

Until next Sunday,
Justin