I spent some time talking to an old friend. Someone who knew me before marriage and kids and adulting and bills and serious responsibilities.
I always find it interesting to hear about myself back then. Before I was self aware, before I was conscious, and before I knew what mattered.
I have spent a large majority of my life learning how to be better. I went to motivational speakers when I was young and I bought an expensive Tony Robbins CD set when I was 17 or 18.
There are lots of little things I’ve learned that make a difference, but nothing makes a difference if you don’t apply it to yourself and do the mental gymnastics involved in getting to know yourself better.
You have to learn how to think well. You have to learn who you are and what makes you tick. You have to heal your childhood wounds, and you need to subscribe to the school of life and forever be a student.
It’s not as daunting as it sounds. Everything unfolds over time. But as you change, your life changes and if the people who are close to you aren’t on the journey … you can’t help but leave them behind.
I am a totally different person after all of that. I don’t recognize the personality of the person I used to be.
I said things back then I wouldn’t dream of saying now, I was angry about things that I can’t explain now, and I didn’t share what I wanted, what I dreamed of, or anything that scared me.
And that’s why we are on this journey. The things you think are important now aren’t likely that important in the grand scheme of things. And the more you heal and grow the wiser you become and the better choices you make.
That’s the point. We want to be a little bit better everyday so that as the years pass, you don’t recognize the person you used to be.
And the better it gets, the better it gets.