17 Pieces Of Tough Love I Wish I Was Given In My Early 20s

1. There comes a point in your life where you have to start paving your way into adulthood and start taking accountability for your actions. The time is now. Every decision you make is just that, your decision. You cannot play the blame game to ease your conscience or to make yourself feel better where you went wrong. Rationalizing the logic, the factors, as to why you arrived to a certain decision is also futile. It is what it is. You are old and mature enough to act of your own volition, therefore you are old enough for accountability.

2. Fate is bullshit. Don’t comfort yourself with the if it’s meant to be. We are the creators of our own destinies with free will.

3. You are the reason why your life isn’t happier. Yes, there are situations and forces outside of your control, but you can CHOOSE how you react to these. Whether it’s something that’s making your life a little bit more difficult, something completely devastating, or even life-altering, your reaction and how you choose to manage specific situation, ailment, or setback is YOUR decision.

Will I give this power to hinder me? Will I give this the power to emotionally destroy me? Will I give this the power to change my life course? Or will I take and learn from this? Will I try to rise above this? Will I do what I can, even if it’s just a little bit, to pick myself up bit by bit?

4. You can run from your problems all you want but you’ll always be running right back to where you started from. Ignorance is only bliss for so long.

Just because you sweep your problems under the rug doesn’t mean there isn’t any dirt. Drinking your problems away never works. Ignoring your problems only gives you more problems. It may not seem like the easiest option, but actually facing them head-on and in the quickest of times is the easiest and cleanest of ways.

5. Your dreams are only pretty ideas if you don’t actually work to chase them.

6. There’s a difference between support and dependency. You are responsible for yourself. Yes, you have family and friends you can rely on, but there’s a very clear line between a support system and a lifeline.

7. If your state of happiness depends on a person, or how your relationship is with a person, it isn’t love. You cannot look for happiness in other people. Yes, other people can make you feel happy, but you cannot be dependent upon another for it. That kind of happiness is only an illusion. REAL and pure happiness only comes from within. Until you have found that within yourself, you will never truly find it with anyone else. Other people are supposed to only add on to our happiness, not fulfill it.

8. You can have all the caring, loving, and supporting people in your life, but ultimately you are always alone. This isn’t meant as a bad thing, either.

You experience this life alone, from your own perspective. You learn alone, you feel alone, you dream alone, you hurt alone, and ultimately when you leave this place, whether someone is holding your hand or not, you go alone.

It is imperative that you learn how to be able to be at peace alone, how to be comfortable alone, and how to find joy in solitude. The earlier you learn this, the more tranquility you will find in your life.

9. At some point, the reason you keep getting your heart broken is only your fault. Stop tripping over the same rock over and over again. Learn that people aren’t what they say but what they do.

Yes, we are all human, no one is perfect, and we all make mistakes. But when you keep giving the same people chance after chance, after mistake and mistake, the reason you’re hurting is because of you and not them. Do not feel sorry for yourself, nobody else will either. Choose to stay in the same toxic relationship or friendship, but stop crying about it as if you didn’t want to be there.

10. The same advice can only be given for so long. There comes a point where the people around you have become exhausted in trying to help you while you are all deaf ears. Make a change after tripping over the same rock for the umpteenth time or keep that shit to yourself.

11. When he calls you after 2 a.m., it isn’t cute or romantic, or because he couldn’t help but to think about you, or thought about you all night while he was drunk. NO. You were only an afterthought. In fact, he spends ZERO time thinking about you.

12. When he tells you he needs time or that he just hasn’t ever felt this way before, he isn’t afraid of his feelings, and you’re not this mythical exception to the rule, he just doesn’t want to be committed to you.

13. When he only acts like he likes you when you have sex, he only likes you for sex.

14. Don’t label anyone as your hero, every hero is human.

15. Yes, life is all about the memories and all about the experiences. And yes, we all know you’ll remember the nights you stayed up until 4 a.m. drinking with your friends and making mistakes, more than the nights you spent at the library. But really, don’t take that saying too far. Learn to prioritize. Make yourself proud. Strive. Achieve. Succeed. Learn how to balance.

16. Start building up your resume as soon as possible. Seriously, get off of your ass. It’s not just about class. Work experience, volunteering, interning, leadership, whatever you can put down on that page. DO IT! You graduate college and there is so many of you’s out there. You will feel so much more confident going on those interviews with all those bullet points.

17. You’re not that important. The world does not revolve around you. Other people don’t think about you as much as you hypothesize. People don’t always make decisions with you in mind. Not everybody is out to get you. Not everybody is in love with you either.