Dear Miguel,

I’m a woman around my thirties at the moment, and was just today thinking back the days I was around 18 to 20 years old.

As a teenager I also wanted to be “this woman” – this woman who is well educated, beautiful and having lots of friends, with interesting career and exciting life. But it seemed to be impossible to achieve: I just wasn’t naturally as good dressing up as my friends, and seemed to have difficulties with directing my life. For too long I felt alienated with my life – and later on I’ve realized why was it so.

The problems were:

1.) I didn’t trust myself. As a young person I was in a hurry – thinking, that if I’d just look like this or that, if I’d just have lots of friends and if I’d just had a cool career with my natural talent, I would be lovable & happy.

Wrong thinking.

First of all: you can never, ever be anyone or anything else but yourself. And being successful isn’t actually an outer goal at all: it’s based on becoming the best possible you. To reach this goal you need to breath in and understand this one crucial thing: don’t set outer goals where to compare yourself to (& feel like a failure), but instead: look inside. You are someone already. No matter how young you are – this person inside of you is the one who with you will make the journey called life with. So the sooner you start learning to get along with him, the better.

Learn to love, listen and respect to yourself the way you are. You have certain qualities you can feel happy about: cherish these qualities & feel joy having them. You also have some qualities that needs a practice: don’t be afraid to face them. Everyone fails time to time, and there’s really no reason to be afraid of failure or pain. We all, each single one of us, have to get use having these things in our lives – as pain is an inevitable part of growing up. What happens, though, is that with time you’ll get a higher tolerance to them.

You also have a body: a one, great and working body you are able to take care of. Don’t objectify it, but start to live in it – as it is the only housing you’ll ever have. Do great things with your body: try different kind of exercises, and find the joy in your physical being. Learn to cherish your sensuality both in your physical being and in relation to your diet: learn to love & appreciate food, too. It’s easy to eat properly, when you give up the idea food being “just something”, and open up yourself to cooking and regular meals as a form of art itself.

2.) There is no shortcuts. Every tree grows from a seed – and every person becomes who she/he is a one step at the time. It’s good to have outer goals, as they make you direct your action toward something. But be prepared, that life has it’s ways: it’s often the journey towards something, that will give you the greatest teachings you’ll have. Don’t be afraid of pain or hard times – for example studying isn’t always just fun and easy. To learn and grow you need to accept that you’ve all the time asked to take one more step outside your comfort area: and that’s the thing with everyone. In my case it has often helped me to check if I’m in a right place when saying to myself: there is no place in this world I could be without having to fight. Is this the fight worth having from all the possible, here and now? Would solving this fight make me the happiest person I could imagine at the time?

3.) There is no other way of becoming all these things you desire, than your own way. 30 years of living has showed me one thing for sure: life hasn’t always given me the things I thought I wanted – but it has been generous with the things I’ve needed at the time. Not any of us can choose our wounds that will later on define our greatest battles – so best thing to do is just accept them as the cards you’re playing with. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else, as they have different cards to begin with. Concentrate on playing the best possible game with the ones given to you.

So to say: let go of these ideas of outer success: they will come, if you’ll learn to master your inner success at first. The people I know that have really “made it” reaching their thirties have been the ones who never did things based on how they looked like outside. Instead they concentrated on doing their best at every phase in their life – no matter if they were working in old people’s house or a coffee shop – they always seemed to put themselves in things and enjoying what they were doing. They didn’t concentrate on pleasing anyone else but themselves.

As there is also one secret in life that I’ve become to realize when growing up: you can never “get” love, give it, or loose it. You can only share it. And to have something to share, you need to learn to love yourself, your body, your passions – and the life you’re living.

Same comes with happiness: it’s not something you can ever “get”, but something, you can only “be”. The seeds of happiness are often set, when you open your eyes to all the things you can feel gratitude over. Nothing in life is promised to no one, and nothing should we take granted – as it can be taken away the next day (health for example). When you realize this it hopefully inspires you to take care of all the things you have here & now – and start building on them as a true optimist ;).

Good luck – it’ll take time to start getting it, but as long as you stay true to your authentic self, you will make it.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 6 months ago by Sanna.