34 Things I’ve Learnt in 34 Years

It was my birthday recently, my 34^th if you hadn’t guessed that already, and I thought what a perfect time to ruminate on 34 things I’ve learnt over 34 years.

1. You can’t pour from an empty cup: This is such a big one for me. I learnt it when I was living in a yoga retreat up in North Yorkshire and a lot of the Buddhist teachings we were touching on would centre around how you have to look after yourself before you look after others. Initially I thought it all sounded a bit selfish but then I heard the phrase ‘you can’t pour from an empty cup’ and it all made sense. If I don’t look after my own emotional and mental wellbeing first and foremost then I don’t have anything to give other people in terms of emotional support. It’s a saying I parrot to people ALL the time when they’re getting burnt out, but feeling pressure to support others.

2. Be a lighthouse: I found this quote on a Yogi tea teabag and I didn’t get it at first. Now I feel like it’s a softer version of ‘be the change you want to see in the world’ (the fake Ghandi quote!), or perhaps ‘treat others how you want to be treated’!

3. Every job is stressful: It’s probably a little tough to see where I’m going with this one, but bear with me! I was moaning about academia to a pal and talking about stressed I was, and I was romanticising a job I once had trying to convince myself the grass was greener before. He just shrugged and said “well, every job’s stressful”. At first, I was a bit hurt that he didn’t just validate my feelings, but then I realised he was right! Every job IS stressful. I realised then that it wasn’t about trying to find a job that wasn’t stressful it was about finding a job that was worth it. I remember this every time I start talking about other careers as if the grass would be so much greener!

4. Giving fewer fucks: Now, I’ve read a lot of these types of posts and many of them say that since they’ve gotten older they no longer give a fuck what people think. I have to say I still give a lot of fucks and I still care what people think. But I give infinitely fewer fucks than when I was 24 or indeed 14 (and I hope to give even fewer when I’m 44)! I just think life is so much easier, freer, and happier when you care less about what people think.

5. You don’t need an excuse to say no: Oh, how my life changed when I learnt you could just say ‘no’. Not ‘no, I have a fake dentist’s appointment’, or ‘no, my mum says I’m not allowed out’, or ‘no, I’m not feeling very well’. Just ‘no’ or ‘no, I don’t want to’! I still remember the first time I did this when I said ‘no’ to an extra shift at a pub I was working at. I just said ‘no’ and it was life changing!

6. You can be honest about needing time to yourself: On one occasion whilst I was living in the yoga retreat, I was supposed to go for a walk with another lady that worked there. On the day she asked me if we could reschedule because she needed some time by herself. IT BLEW MY MIND! I didn’t realise that you could do that! It didn’t even cross my mind that needing some me time could be a valid excuse to cancel plans. It was honest, simple and powerful. I’ve never forgotten it.

7. Don’t moan (a lot) without doing something about it: Everybody moans. Moaning is a valid and useful thing to do, it’s also kind of fun sometimes. But, being a broken record is annoying! If I catch myself repeating my moan to too many people too many times, that’s when I realise, I need to do something about it. If I’m sounding off so much, it must be because something is deeply affecting me and therefore, I need to change it.

8. It’s raining microbes: Okay so this is oddly specific, but I had the most awesome botanist teach me during some of my lab practicals in my undergrad. To help us stop contaminating our agar plates she would dance around the room with wild hand gestures declaring that it was raining microbes, reminding use to use the plate lids as an umbrella and keep the plates close to the Bunsen burner in the safety of the convection current. I feel like that advice has had a lasting impact!

9. You can feel two things at once: You might read this and think, duh, obviously! But, it’s something that’s only just clicked! Since having ME I often struggle to marry up my emotions. Among other conflicting feelings I often feel grateful for the health I have, but also deeply sad for what I’ve lost. It can be tough to process. Then one day I saw a TikTok that talked about how you can feel two things at once and suddenly it all made sense. You CAN feel two things at once! Duh!

10. Life is a stage and nobody cares about your problems: Awful right? This isn’t one of the lessons I hold dear, but it’s certainly one I remember. When I was 16 I worked in a shoe shop and one day the manager saw I was upset in the stock room. She wanted me back on the shop floor and she was a colossal dick, so she looked me in the eye and said ‘life is a stage and nobody cares about your problems’. I repeated it like a mantra as I sunk into a long period of chronic depression. I genuinely believed it. Now, it serves as a beacon that I never want to work for anyone like that again, that I never want to feel like that again and that people can do an oscar worthy job of acting fine when they’re actually in a pit of despair. It was a cruel but valuable lesson.

11. You can’t change people around you (but you can change yourself): This was something I learned from my first therapist (post-awful shoe shop lady)! I was lamenting about how awful my boyfriend was and how he wasn’t behaving the way I wanted him to. My therapist explained that I couldn’t change him, but I could change myself. Now that I’m older I know that you shouldn’t try to change anyone anyway, but I was young, and I was careering wildly through my first ‘relationship’ so I didn’t really understand that. Now, when situations or people are hard work I often find myself thinking how can I change. How can I change the way I think, how can I change the situation, how can I take control? Hopefully this doesn’t need saying, but I definitely don’t mean make all the compromises and be a doormat! For me it’s about asking how I can take back my power in a situation…or at least try to.

12. Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about: I feel like this is pretty obvious! But, be kind to people. Sometimes the people who are struggling the most put the bravest faces on (see number 10).

13. Don’t let a boy take away your sparkle: I used to be on the Aberystwyth University dance team and after winning a dance competition up in Bangor everyone was very drunk on the bus home…apart from me. I had a migraine! Suddenly a shout from the front of the bus pierced through the pain in my head, “DON’T LET A BOY TAKE AWAY YOUR SPARKLE”. As well as piercing through the pain it pierced through a few lies I had been telling myself. I was with a boy who took away my sparkle! It’s a very showdance saying, but within it is a very profound message. You should only be with people (of any gender) who let you keep your sparkle!

14. Don’t wait for people. Do things by yourself: I left school at 16 (college dropout!) and all my friends stayed in education and went off to uni. That meant at some point I was kind of left on my own. It got to a point where if I didn’t do things by myself I didn’t do things at all. It taught me a great deal of independence and it’s something I still live by now.  

15. Friends for a reason, season or lifetime: I always thought this was a super lame saying, but it’s so very true! I’ve had friends that fit into all of these categories, and although it was hard in the beginning to accept that certain friendships were over, I find it a lot easier now. People change, people move countries and just because a friendship has drifted apart it doesn’t invalidate the friendship that you had.

16. Nothing and nobody is perfect: The moment I learned this as a teenager in therapy, life got a lot less painful!

17. Trying to be the most ‘me’ is my biggest goal: I dunno, I just think that learning to be and living as the truest version of myself is my biggest goal in life. It’s not easy and there are multiple layers to it but it feels super worthwhile.  

18. Variety is the spice of life: A substitute maths teacher said this to my class as she decided to teach us about taxes. I don’t remember enjoying the maths lesson, but she was right. Variety is the spice of life!

19. Trust your gut: Wow has my gut tried to warn me about some things. Things that I’ve gone and done anyway, and they’ve turned out terribly! I knew deep down they’d be terrible, but I did them because I didn’t believe my gut was right. I don’t regret anything because all of those terrible experience shaped the person I am now, but these days I’d rather trust my gut and have fewer bad memories!

20. Nobody is ‘just’ anything: I used to have a bad habit of telling people I was ‘just’ a cleaner or ‘just’ a barmaid. I can’t remember who told me that I wasn’t ‘just’ anything, but it made a big impression. They were right and now I make a concerted effort to not say ‘just’ whether I’m talking about myself or about someone else. We are more than our jobs.

21. With Edina in ab fab being considered the fat one, no wonder I have weight issues: In fairness I seem to remember most of it is Edina making self-deprecating jokes about her own weight, but it’s not really just about Edina. It’s about that slew of make over programmes in the 2000s that tore apart the way women looked and with surgical precision picked fault with weight, ageing and style (or perceived lack of it). It’s about Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones’s Diary. It’s about those paparazzi shots of celebrities on the beach with their cellulite circled on the front cover. I don’t know if things have gotten better in the media or if I’ve gotten better at filtering it out, but either way it took me a long time to realise the impact that kind of thing has had on me and even longer to learn to ignore it (or at least try to).

22. Your PhD is your main priority: So, this isn’t about PhD’s, it’s about priorities. I was juggling too many things in my first year and I got a bit overwhelmed. It’s been a pattern of mine, peak and then burn out. My supervisor told me that my PhD was main priority and everything else fell secondary to that….work wise! (He’s not a sadist!) It probably shouldn’t have taken me that long to start learning how to prioritise, but anyway it did and prioritising is great!

23. You have to want to help yourself: I’m not sure how to explain it, but you can be given all the help and advice in the world, but until you’re ready to help yourself it’s not really going to work.

24. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink: I think this is essentially the reverse of the above. You can reach out to someone, you can leave the door open (figuratively) and you can offer help, but ultimately unless they’re thirsty for it, they won’t drink the water. So it’s good not to force people into accepting your help. People operate in their own time.

25. Don’t take yourself too seriously: I didn’t really realise I was taking myself to seriously until I made a new friend during my masters. She had rainbow hair, she had a flat full of plushies and she openly and unashamedly expressed her love for Harry Potter. She was so unapologetically herself and I admired that so much. It made me realise I was focusing on being a grown-up and a scientist too much and not stopping to have wild, silly, colourful fun.

26. Specifying when you need to vent, not fix: Does that need more explanation? Probably not! Basically, when I learnt I could tell someone that I just needed to have a little moan and get something of my chest, and that I didn’t need to hear suggestions to fix my problem…it changed my life!

27. You get out what you put in: I’m absolutely 100% sure this doesn’t work for everything! There are plenty of times I can think of where I worked very hard and flat out failed or didn’t really get any reward. There are also times I haven’t worked hard and done really well. BUT, having said that, I think in a more general way this holds pretty true. I feel like it’s a good rule regardless!

28. How do you eat an elephant: …with lots of small bites! This is another saying I really rolled my eyes at when I first heard it, but actually anytime I have a big task to tackle I think about how I’d go about eating an elephant! It’s been useful.

29. Stop and smell the roses: I think both literally and figuratively it’s important to stop and smell the roses.

30. Some people just look busy: I don’t think it improved my life when I learnt that some people seem to get through their work life by mostly just looking busy, but it certainly made me a little more savvy (and maybe a little more angry!).

31. It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey: Eurgh, this is such an over-used fortune cookie type saying, but it’s SO damn true!

32. Flipping a coin when you’re torn between two options: This is another obvious one, but it really works. I think you generally know deep down what you want to do, but sometimes your judgement is clouded by a tonne of stuff. When you flip a coin there’s this visceral reaction to the outcome. You’re either super happy and relieved it turned out the way you ‘secretly’ wanted, or you’re disappointed it didn’t. Either way, you have your answer!

33. Every day is a new day: I put this one in because of the sheer amount of times I’ve written off a day of work because of an unproductive morning, or written off the week because I’ve messed up a new routine, or thought I’ll start *insert thing* on Monday. I’m not saying that doing those things is bad, but it’s often been helpful to remind myself that tomorrow will also work, even if it’s a random Thursday in the middle of the month, or that the week isn’t a total failure because of one slip up.

34. Nip it in the bud: So, this is one I struggle with, because I can be a real people pleaser. I have a friend (you know who you are) who is very good at telling people what she thinks and when they’ve upset her. I find it really difficult to express my feelings if someone has said something or done something that’s hurt me, and I also find it very difficult when someone confronts me with something I’ve done that’s had a negative impact on them. Although it’s uncomfortable I’ve learned a lot from watching this friend nip things in the bud with people before those feelings fester and turn into something much bigger. I’ve learnt about her, I’ve learnt about myself, I’ve learnt about friendships, it’s brought us closer, and I’ve learnt a valuable life lesson…even if it’s one that still needs work!

So, that’s it. 34 things for 34 years. Do any of these resonate with you? If this inspires you to think about some of the lessons or pivotal sayings that have impacted you throughout your life, let me know what they are. I’d love to hear them.