You know when everyone says that your high school days are the best days of your life? It’s almost as if they’re saying it couldn’t get any better than waking up every morning at 8 AM and surviving another group project! 

After high school ended, my life just started to begin and sometimes I feel as if it hasn’t even begun now.

Everything I survived up until now was just a crash course for what is yet to come. 

My first lesson taught me to live for myself and not for others. You can’t change other people, so either you change yourself or change your situation. Why should you have to change for them to like you when you have always accepted them exactly the way they are? 

Every flaw is a gift. These are the gifts that make you priceless. No one can put a value on something that is so unique that it can’t be compared or labelled as nothing like it exists in the world.  

Your flaws make you exceptional in a way that makes it impossible for anyone to compete with you because they don’t have what you have. And what you have, there’s not even a name for it, because you are the only one who has it. 

My second lesson taught me that even the ones closest to you are the ones who are the most distant. You may not hear from them every day or even in a year. At times, you wonder if you can still call them a friend or have they become another name on your Facebook?

Be thankful for everything they did do, even if they don’t do it anymore. They were there once when you needed them and for that reason you are able to solve all your problems today on your own. It may not seem like it, but every small text, trip to the bar and even the moments when all they did was put a hand on your shoulder, was a gesture that you mattered.

Sometimes, it seems like you don’t matter to them anymore. You can’t read their minds, so maybe they have moved on. But they played a role in your life. Each advice, conversation, fight and moment, were tools for you to be the person you have become but didn’t think you could be. 

If it wasn’t for those small gestures that made you feel like there were people out there to whom you were important to, you wouldn’t realize that at the end of the day, the only person that you need to matter to, is you. 

My third lesson taught me that a real heart break can only happen by the ones you love. Otherwise, you can’t even call it a heart break. You only give your heart to the people you love. They are the ones who have you heart, therefore, the only ones who have the power to break it.

But there’s a reason you give your heart to the wrong people. Your heart needs to break. It needs to have cracks and holes to let in the right love that would have otherwise been unable to make it through if your heart was completely sealed.

My fourth lesson taught me that the ones who are good, are often the ones who have it the worst. We have to fight harder and sometimes even breathe harder just to live in the same air as everyone else.

It’s not fair. But have you noticed? The ones who do have it perfect, are the most flawed people of this world. They are weak because they never had to fight for anything. They never had to try to reach for stars so their feet never left the land. Although it may seem like they are soaring in the air when in fact, they have never even made it past the ground. 

We may not have much, but we have more in our minds than they will ever have in their entire lives. And that’s when you truly realize that we are the ones who really have it the best.

My fifth and last lesson taught me, that you feel the happiest, when you are completely alone. Away from everyone else you learn to discover yourself as you truly are the natural beautiful you, and not the “you” you become and are molded into in the presence of others. 

You don’t even realize it, but we change ourselves when in the company of our friends, our close friends and our best friends. We act differently with our bosses, co-workers and family at home. Every person in our lives define who we are before we even get a chance to know who that person is.

Being away from all that inspired me to create myself. Who I was before was a creation made by others. If I am truly the captain of my soul, how have I always let everyone else run it? 

When you are alone, you become your only boss. So be the best d*mn boss you can be. Be so cruel that nothing anyone can ever say will break you the way you broke yourself. 

Laugh at your silly mistakes so whenever another person tries to laugh at you, you can say you already beat them to it. Teach yourself to hate the things that people love the most about you, and love the things that they hate the most. 

That way you will show yourself that their opinions don’t mean anything, because they’re not your boss, you are. And the only person you need to impress, is you.