5 Things I am No Longer Worried About in 2023

This is Growth!

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Happy New Year!

I took an unplanned break from writing in December 2022. It’s not that I didn’t want to write, it’s that I couldn’t. Every time I opened my laptop, I stared at a blank page for hours. They call it writer’s block and it was the first time I experienced it.

Anyways, thank you so much for your patience. I’m here now and this time with a post about things I’m no longer worried about in 2023. Happy reading :)!

There comes a point in time when we inevitably reevaluate our life: how we want to live it, who we want to share it with, and what we want to be doing. 2022 was that year for me.

My life was turned upside down mid-2021 with the loss of my mother. For the first six months after her death, I didn’t have the energy or the willpower to figure my life out.

Then came 2022 and with it, I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. At first, it was the simple things that made me feel like myself again: a smile from a loved one, a really long hug from a friend, an episode or five of Friends, and a warm bowl of oatmeal porridge.

However, it was during this time that I started to notice that I would never really be the same. A core part of me had changed and fighting that transformation was both exhausting and painful. So, I chose to embrace it.

Turns out, there’s a name for what I was going through. Psychologists call it Post Traumatic Growth and it’s what happens when negative experiences spur positive life changes. Of course, I would have preferred to skip the trauma, but we can’t control what happens to us, only how we react to it.

I am a different person today — different in ways that feel good, that make me better, that make me me. The trivial things that used to worry me in the past are no longer at the top of my priority list, and my life has become so much more joyful as a result.

As you settle into 2023, I’d like to invite you to rethink, relearn, and reconfigure your life. What are some of the things that you’ve historically focused on that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things? What do you tend to worry about that you shouldn’t? What could you do to live a…