Hard pills to swallow

I have only been in this world for 2 decades and 2 years. Most would say I’m still quite young and still have much to go but if you know me personally, you would also say that I don’t act my age. I think it’s with my environment, the people I deal with, my friends, the way I was raised and many more factors but I can say that I did mature earlier than most people my age. 

I’m only 22 but I work a full-time corporate job, support my family, send my sisters to school, slowly trying to build my own empire and along all of it I’m still transitioning from my teenage years to adulthood. It’s been a rollercoaster ride but without all of this I wouldn’t become the person I am today. 

I sometimes feel like an outcast with people my age because I think differently from them. Many would call me "tita" because of how I usually handle things. It's both a curse and a blessing to be honest.

After all of those experiences, here are some of the hard pills I had to swallow when I entered adulthood.

Set boundaries for yourself

When you’re going to your first job or meeting new friends, no matter how kind you are, there are really a lot of people that would test the hell out of you. Like for me, I wasn’t raised to be rude and I always choose kindness and compromise but be weary because people do take advantage of you. Setting boundaries by limiting interaction with toxic people, declining a task that wasn't supposed to be passed to you in the first place. 

This is harder than most people would think because again kindness goes a long way and the line would always seem so blurry with how much you can still tolerate them and when you need to stop because you are starting to get abused.

Know what you want then communicate it.

When we were a child, we just cried and our parents knew what to do. As a teenager, when  we had friends and if we were pissed, we'd just shut ourselves down and let them figure out what’s wrong. We're so used to that kind of pattern but when we enter the adult world, things are totally on the downside.

In the adult world, if something is wrong you say it, no one would really have the time to think about what’s going on in your head because the truth is each individual already has something in their minds. 

This is a big transition for me and I’m still having a hard time practicing this because when I am asked what do I want? We’re still at a point that I’ll get a bit shy and would need insisting but hopefully I get passed that phase.

Watching your diet. 

Diet is not only the things you eat, it’s the books you read, movies you watch and the people you interact with. As we grow older, we tend to be more selective and more decisive, not all the time, but I feel like we have a sense of identity and value for ourselves. Because of this our friends become smaller, the books we read are within our interest and the likes. As you grow older, you tend to do your own thing instead of following trends. 

Work is just work.

I think it’s embedded in our culture to do work diligently which is a thing I’m really proud of but because of this, most of the time we get exploited. Work is just supposed to be work, don’t take it way too seriously and don’t ever attach your self-worth to it. 

As much as we all want to do a great job at work and produce quality outputs, it’s still just work. We don’t have to sacrifice our health for it, this is a hard thing to do for me because I always strive to do my best in everything that I do but I just realized that work is just work and nothing more. 

I know I have a lot more to learn in the coming years and I am still learning all of these too. But again all of this are easier said than done. We know most of it but we never really quite learn it until we are in a position where we can't do anything but learn it.

See you around!

Lead image: Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash