A Year Full of Challenges and Joy — 8 Lessons I Learned in 2021🌠
2021 was such an amazing year for me and I had the opportunity to learn so many new things. While with many challenges along the way, I managed to overcome them. In this article, I want to outline 8 important lessons I learned in 2021 and my goals for 2022.
Lessons I learned in 2021
Being able to adapt quickly is 🔑
With so many events taking place in 2021, it was very chaotic at times. At some point in time, I felt like I didn’t know what to do and how to approach a certain situation. After joining The Knowledge Society or TKS, I was exposed to so many different mindsets, one of them is figuring it out. With this mindset, I had decided to challenge myself and try to adapt quickly to the things happening around me. I noticed that this really helped me with sometimes slowing down each task to observe it and then move on which led me to finish it quicker.
Slow down and take some things one step at a time ⭐
Throughout 2021 I’ve felt like I’ve rushed some things or haven’t taken the time to understand the small but exciting details about something. I decided to slow down and take some things one step at a time which really helped me realize the importance of understanding something or creating an environment for you to be happy with what you’re doing.
Celebrating Others makes a more encouraging environment!
This year, through TKS I learned about a mindset known as celebrating others. While the name is simple, it isn’t something we do all the time. Celebrating others and acknowledging their achievements really helps make a more encouraging community and expand the supportiveness of that community. The TKS community is such an encouraging community with amazing people who have the potential to impact billions! We always shoutout people and it just creates an environment where everyone feels welcome!
Choose the people who you surround with that can shape your life in a positive way.
Choosing the people who you surround yourself with is really important because these are the people who can impact your life substantially. They are the people who can be there to support you in hard times, to constantly challenge each other to achieve our full potential. These people can be the ones who can make the most impact on our decisions and choosing the right people and surrounding yourself with them will increase your happiness substantially. I’ve made 2 amazing friends since grade 5 and we constantly talk, they are always there for me when I need them, we constantly push each other to set goals to reach out full potential, make jokes and laugh a lot! So I wanted to shoutout Dev Parikh and Yajat Mittal for being such amazing friends!
Use your youth in networking!
A misconception that so many people have is that age is a huge limiting factor in networking although so many professionals out there really want to help young people who are ambitious. A lesson that I learned was to really use my youth and ambition and try to network more since networking is a huge part of the real-world and just allows you to experience so many opportunities. In the new year I definitely want to network much more often.
Explore the outdoors as much as possible
This year in the spring and summer time I went outside as much as possible. Going outside is really just this sort of therapy, you smell the freshly bloomed flowers and the nice blue sky above, it really is just a fulfilling experience in my eyes. For me experiencing the outdoors is a way to disconnect and to just enjoy time. Something that I encourage to anyone reading this would be try and go outside as much as possible, it really helps with calming yourself down and just enjoying the beauty of nature!
Be early to as many things as possible
As someone who usually is on time or early to most events/places I wanted to reinforce that this year as well. I tried to go to as many places on time since when we look at things such as calls with professionals or any networking event. being 5 minutes earlier and having those 5 minutes more to talk can make a huge difference in your conversation. Just constantly get into the habit of being early to do things, may it be school work, finishing a project, just get to it and crush it 🦄!
Don’t overthink a lot and learn to live in the moment
Throughout 2021 I felt like I was overthinking a lot, even about small situations and I felt like it really didn’t make that period of time an enjoyable one. I was anxious about the future but I then realized that have long-term goals, work towards them but when working towards them, live in the present and enjoy what you’re doing. When I implemented this I become much happier than I already was and it was just a boost of motivation overall!
Goals for 2022 🎉
With 2022 right around the corner I really wanted look at how I want to approach 2022 with the lessons I learned from 2021. First of all I want to start theming the months in 2022, I feel like having a theme for a month will help me narrow my goals for that month and make my goals more specific. I also feel like that theming the month will help me work on implementing that theme on a bigger scale that would be beneficial. If theming each month doesn’t work out then I feel like theming each week could be good as well for more manageable time chunks with more week specific goals. In 2022 I really want to focus going very deep into the field of space tech and work more on health goals to ensure a overall healthy life. I want to also block quite a bit of time for just going outdoors and enjoying the nature around me.
Conclusion
Thank you so much for reading this article. To connect with me feel free to connect on LinkedIn or subscribe to my newsletter!
I wish everyone of you reading this article a happy new year and safe journeys!
- Siddhant 🙏
