We are not the same person we were when we started on this journey called life.

Changes and challenges seemed to be at every corner. Your life does not get better by chance; it gets better by change, despite its circumstances.

In my personal life, I felt the tug of war, pointing me in all sorts of directions. My life has been a combination of messy mud and slippery slopes, walking to find the path that will liberate me without sliding. Other times, the road is new, bright, and shiny, like crystal snow falling from the sky to bless me. Change is unpredictable; sometimes, it feels like a mix of a winter storm in wonderland.

Life can be confusing, unmanageable, and hurtful at times. And yet, it can be fun, loving, and contentment. Many things in life change over time, especially our personal development. The key to success is always to learn and grow.

In life, we shed as we grow and develop. Through the years, our values, beliefs, and intentions change. They change to fit the new you, which is evolving and expanding into the beauty that you need to be.

Here is my list of personal growth:

• Listen Actively. Actively learn to pay attention and demonstrate to others that you truly value their opinions and what they have to say. Choose active listening, open-ended questions, with supporting body language, and remove any distractions that impede your ability to listen.
• Make fear your friend. To eliminate fear, you have first to be exposed to fear, allow yourself to feel afraid, and expose yourself to it. Once you are comfortable with the ambiguity & uncertainty of the situation, you can start working your way through it in a calm, rational manner.
• Stop Procrastinating. You need to understand that procrastination is not a character trait, but rather a habit. Since it is a habit, it is 100% possible for you to unlearn it just as you have learned the pattern. Strive to utilize time most effectively and avoid procrastination by all means.
• Become More Resilient. Resilience is the innate ability to overcome any kind of adversity. It is the difference between feeling helpless and facing your problems confidently and bravely. You must always learn how to bounce back from any sort of problem; it will only help you to emerge as a stronger individual.
• Manage Stress Effectively. Too much stress can land you up in distress. It impacts not you’re your physical health but also your mental and emotional health. You must know how to manage stress effectively. There are a lot of stress management techniques available these days. So all you need to develop is the willingness to fight stress. Finding the means to tackle stress is not a challenge these days with help available at the click of a mouse.
• Ignore your limitations. Limiting beliefs hinder your progress by keeping you caught up in your comfort zone and prevented you from trying out new things and stops you from taking risks for fear of failure or getting hurt in the process. You can have limiting beliefs about almost anything ranging from money, relationships, success, and the list is endless. It is essential to identify your limiting beliefs, conquer them, and reinstate them with positive beliefs that enable you to achieve your dreams in life.
• Share Yourself. Become a teacher and share your time, feedback, opinions, knowledge and skills. The transfer of knowledge and skills not only benefits the other, other person but the process itself reinforces the neural pathways of what you know, taking you closer to mastery.
• Increase Your willpower. Harboring a reliable will power enhances your finances, your health, your relationships, your professional success, and all other areas of your life. Irrespective of the goals that you have set for yourself, you need the willpower to attain them.
• Become More mindful. Strive to become more aware. It helps you to acknowledge the abundance and the benefits that are already a part of your lives. Instead of spending time thinking about the past, which no longer serves your interest, or worrying about the future, which you have no idea of how it is going to be, you must learn to live in the present and enjoy the moments.
• Make Better decisions. Develop the habit of making better decisions in life. The choices or decisions that you make determines the experience that you will eventually lead. Your choices shape your life, so it is all the more critical, the better decisions you make, the better your life is likely to be.
• Work on your growth mindset. Your attitude defines who you are as a person, and it the identification point of the state of your mind. You must continuously work on your mood and strive to make it conducive for growth. A positive mental attitude can move mountains for you. It helps you to achieve what you want from life.

It is never late to start working on improving and expanding your journey . It is part of the path within to continue to nurture your many developments. There are so many great lessons we can learn from them and ourselves.

I made a list of some of the most important lessons I have learned so far, lessons that have a significant impact in my life.

1. We get treated in life the way we teach others to treat us.

People will treat you the way you allow them to. Respect and love yourself first, and others will do the same.

2. There are no mistakes, only lessons we need to master.

If you learn from everything that happens to you, you will discover that there is no such thing as mistakes, only lessons to be learned. And if you don’t, then chances are that your life will continue to be in a cycle of confusion.

3. Forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself.

“Forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself, to be at peace, to be happy, and to be able to sleep at night. You don’t forgive because you are weak, but because you are strong enough to realize that only by giving up on resentment will you be happy. If you hold on to destructive thoughts like hate, anger, and resentment toward someone, you will end up poisoning yourself more than you poison the other person, and you will be miserable.”

4. What you resist, persists.

What you focus on expands and what you resist, not only does it persist, but it also grows in size. And if you want to shrink something and make it disappear from your life, you need to stop feeding it by fighting against it.

5. Life is all about the journey and less about the destination.

A lot of times, we get so focused on our big dreams and goals, that we forget to enjoy this journey called life. Always remember that life is all about this moment. Life is all about the journey and less about the destination.

So take a deep cleansing breath and allow yourself to be present in everything you do. Allow yourself to enjoy each second of your life. And observe the world around you, the people present in your life, and the beauty that is within and all around you.

6. People deserve a second chance.

The moment you forgive somebody, chances are that you will also give them a second chance, a chance to be near you, without trying to remind them of what they did to you, treating them not as they are, or as they once were, but rather as you want them to be. By doing this, you are also allowing them to grow and become better and better every day. Your ego might tell you to “let these people go,” but what does your heart tell you? We are all humans, we all make mistakes, and we all deserve a second chance, and why not, maybe a third, fourth, sixth and seventh…

7. If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody will.

Don’t expect others to see gold where you can only see dust. If you don’t believe in yourself, if you don’t think that you are capable, a worthy human being, chances are that nobody will. You will act on that belief, and people will treat you based on what you think about yourself based on how you treat yourself and based on how you work and behave in the world.

8. Our attitude toward life determines life’s attitude toward us.

If you think life is unfair, and that bad things always happen to you, the chances are that life will mistreat you, and you will always have many reasons to complain about it. You attract that which you are because you see like draws like just as hate draws hate.

9. If you love yourself, the chances are that others will love you also.

It’s all about self-love; it all starts with self-love. If you don’t have the love for yourself, how can you expect to get it from somebody else? Love yourself and others will love you also.

10. The world has plenty of information but not enough inspiration.

If you think about it, now, with the technological revolution, we get access to so much information. Let’s take, for example, a tiny chip. How much information can you store on it? We have more information than ever… but when it comes to inspiration (in- spirit) I would say that we have a deficit. We focus too much on the outside and not enough on the inside. We can’t seem to understand that it all starts from within. If the interior is a mess, the outside will also be a mess. Listen to your heart, listen to your intuition and know that: “The only real valuable thing is intuition.” Albert Einstein

11. The world won’t change if you don’t change.

You hear people all the time complaining about how crazy the world is and how they want it to change, but if you tell them to make the first step…: “What? Me? Do you think there is something wrong with me? I am perfect, there is nothing I need to change. These people are the ones who need to change, “not me!” They are the ones who are destroying us all, not me…

You see, the outside world is a reflection of who we all are on the inside. And all this madness that is taking place around us; is a result of our collective consciousness. Unfortunately, it’s a very polluted consciousness. It’s not just them, it’s us, us all. If we want the world to change, we have to start with ourselves and trust me; there is something wrong with many of us. With you, with me, with her and she.

12. Loneliness is different from solitude.

There is a difference between being lonely and being in solitude. When you are in isolation, you take advantage of it to get in touch with your inner self, to meditate and to quiet your mind, and that constant need to be around others for you to no longer feel lonely, will disappear. Wayne Dyer talks about this in such a beautiful way, saying that we can never be lonely if we like the person we’re alone with. If you love yourself, if you have no problem with being you, if you have accepted yourself entirely, you will be content with having some quiet time, away from all the noise. You will feel happy when alone and also when surrounded by other people.

13. The more we express our gratitude, the more we can be grateful.

The law of attraction works in all that is good. And also in all that is bad. It’s only up to us whether we choose to focus our attention on the negative or the positive. Focus your attention on the many great things you have, and you are grateful for, and you will see that the more you do that, the more reasons you will have to express your gratitude in life.

14. Patience is a virtue.

For things to happen, for anything to happen, we need to be patient. We first plant the seed of greatness, and then we wait for it to grow, we allow it to grow; we take care of it, and we protect it. Great things take time, and we need to learn how to give time, time.

15. Courage is not the absence of fear.

Fear, that crazy fear who won’t allow us to move forward, who won’t allow us to grow and transform our lives and of those around us will always be present in our lives. Even though many of us know that fear does not exist and that fear is only in our minds, we choose to be paralyzed by it, and we decide to allow it to control our lives, our dreams, our goals, and the level of our happiness. Fear will be present whenever you want to stretch whenever you want to get out of your comfort zone, and whenever you want to do more, be more, have more. What we need to do is look beyond it, and always be aware of the fact that most of the things we fear never happen, because FEAR is nothing more than False Expectations Appearing Real.

And finally, take time to grow inward. It takes courage to grow, to learn and and make mistakes along the way.

Here are ten questions (you can answer in your journal), to help you understand how much you’ve changed in the last 365 days.

1. What one thing did you spend the most time doing last year?

2. What did you learn from the external events in the world?

3. What did you learn about your inner self?

4. What soul lessons did you work on the hardest?

5. What worked the best for you last year?

6. What made you happiest and gave you the most joy?

7. What didn’t work at all? What was an absolute fail?

8. What life goals did you accomplish?

9. What was left undone, or what do you still need to work on?

10. What dreams are you moving toward now?

In 2020 we will dream new dreams. We are eternal souls on an infinite journey. Every year brings new wisdom and soul growth. 2020 is the year to open yourself and find your light to greatness and grace. Change is constant; it is time to make it work for you in whatever you do.What the New Year will bring to you, will depend a great deal on what you bring to yourself.