Like all things, conversations run dry, relationships grow stale, and our lives become a cycle of the same boring small talk. In the last year, my friends and I have begun asking each other the all-too-popular conversation aid ‘rose, bud, thorn’, in which a rose is something good which has occurred in your life, bud is something you are looking forward to, and thorn is something negative. It began as a way for me to fill silence between friends who already seem to know all about me but has completely changed the way I approach both my relationships and personal views on life.  

 I truly hate New Year’s resolutions. The idea that now that we have turned the page on another year, month, day, or simply hour has led us to be a new and improved person is utter nonsense. The truth is, over 90% of these “resolutions” fail every year, most within the first two weeks. To rely on another ‘X’ through a calendar date to strive towards your goals is just another way to procrastinate them, an excuse to be complacent. The reasoning behind my resent towards these resolutions stem from three core ideas – always start now and not later, celebrate every win, and make goals realistic and attainable.  Here, the idea of resolutions are not thrown out the window but instead made sustainable. 

We are taught to believe that the best friends we will find are those who will support us through everything, who will stand by you through every bad decision, and pick you up, comforting you after every fall. As I get older, I’ve found that the people you surround yourself with is far more important than you realize and fully shape and reflect the person you are. The more I care about what (and who) I surround myself with, the more I also realize the kind of people you think would be the best to keep around, often fail aiding in your own development. But what actually makes a good friend? And how do you find them? 

It is no secret that society in recent years, in and out of education, has become increasingly competitive. Being a student at the University of North Carolina has taught me this faster than any other aspect of my life and I quickly realized I needed something to keep up. For me, this became a system of daily goals to complete which I like to call the 5 aspects in student life – mental health, physical health, academic endeavors, personal projects, and community involvement. While this system may not work for everyone, it has for me and is likely at least a step in the right direction to make your own personal method. 

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The term “give grace” has been around since before any of us can remember, originally stemming from religious ideology, yet the older I get the more and more I seem to hear it. To “give grace” simply means to practice forgiveness and patience to those around us. In this we often forget to extend it onto ourselves or extend it too far. Like all things in life a balance in this practice is crucial, but in a society where too often we choose the extreme, a balance seems all too rare.  

One of the hardest truths in life is that nothing lasts forever and everything will change – more than once. Whether you want it to or not, you will find your world changing constantly. Sometimes it will be fast, other times slow. Sometimes you will fight like hell to keep parts of this life, while you let others go. Some things may come in waves and others you may never see again. The fact that these things that once defined you, are ones you may now lose forever, is a hard truth to swallow. The point of this post is to show you it is far more digestible than you think and that these changes can be some of the best parts of your life. 

 It is far too easy to look at others around you and push off their accomplishments or positive graces as “luck”. We do this because the explanation of universal chance is far easier to swallow than the possibility that others are simply more successful than ourselves. This very mindset is a part of what is holding us back. The truth is they didn’t get that internship out of luck; they don’t have your dream body by chance; and their smile isn’t beaming across their face just by coincidence. Others have features in their lives, not because they’re lucky, but because they’ve worked for it. The best way for you to become “lucky” is by doing the same, and of course by reading this post where I will walk you through how to increase your chances for good fortune. 

 It’s no secret that as humans we don’t enjoy lying in our own agony. That no one wants to feel lost or out of place. But what happens when this state is the only way to not fall or fail? To reach a potential one could only ever imagine?