Map of the Soul 30: Meditations from a Decade
Our 20s possess some of the most beautiful moments in life. These years involve self-discovery, adventure, and a few (or many) mistakes before we emerge with enhanced clarity of who we are.
2021 marks the end of my 20s and opens up the next chapter in my life. In what felt like a kaleidoscope of years, my 20s involved uncovering my purpose, reevaluating existing beliefs, and immersing myself in broad experiences that have shaped me into a unique individual.
Inspired by Carl Jung’s work that helped define the human ethos through his ‘Map of the Soul’, I present 10 perennial lessons that delve into my own learnings from a decade. No matter how old you are or where you’re at, these lessons will help you navigate your own map of the soul to live a happier and more fulfilling life.
Lesson 1: There’s always one more thing to learn.
Socrates stated over 2,000 years ago that “I know, that I know nothing”. In today’s world, this saying is as relevant as it was ever before. When we think we fully understand a topic or person, we eventually face the harsh reality that we don’t. In Zen philosophy our tendency to know everything is referred to as having “your cup full.” With a full cup or mind, we close off our capacity to allow new knowledge, perspectives, or experiences in. To be a constant student of life, we must “empty our cup.”
Growth exists when we possess the humility to own what we don’t know and take accountability for what we experience. If you ever feel overwhelmed or that you’ve covered all bases with a specific topic. Think again.
By the age of 26, I had spent a few years delving into the world of self-development. When faced with adversity, I’d often refer to the books, influencers, and speakers I’d been exposed to. “X person says I should do this.” “You’re acting this way because of Y.” I’d come to various conclusions or solutions because I thought I knew why something was the way it was. In truth, I wasn’t always right. I may have had the tools to better understand a situation but could’ve never known something entirely.
How would things be different, or what could you learn if you took a step back and looked at things from a different perspective?
Lesson 2: Regret will haunt you more than failure ever will.
The things that we resist, persist. The hard choices we struggle to make decisions on are often the things we need the most in life. According to Jung, our egos represent the conscious mind. It thrives on certainty and validation and is the one that cowers and avoids failure at all costs. Despite being designed to protect us, our egos face an inherent paradox through our avoidance of failure. To achieve anything meaningful in life the risk of failure must first be faced.
While the cost of avoiding failure is often insubstantial, the cost of regret is not as forgiving. Regret lingers, and unsolved regret takes an unfathomable toll on us, whether we recognise it or not.
Former UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill said, “Success is going through failure to failure without losing enthusiasm”. Success comes with the willingness to put ourselves on the line — despite understanding that we could fail — whilst maintaining faith that learning and perseverance are the catalysts to success. If Churchill had feared failure, it would’ve been one of the biggest regrets in U.K history. Instead, his tenacity and refusal to give in, in conjunction with his leadership in World War II is what helped Britain and Europe through some of its grimmest years.
Instead of seeing every decision or failure of a magnified scale, see your choice in the wider spectrum of life. “Will this decision really hurt me or matter in a year, or five years?” If you see life as a continuum, any risk of failure isn’t as daunting and significantly minimised.
Yesterday is a dream and tomorrow maybe a vision but today is all you’ve got. Don’t live with regret.
Lesson 3: There’s no time limit to starting again.
We’re often living by society’s statute of limitations — you must get married by 35, you must have kids by X, and so on. There’s no such thing as the perfect time. The only thing holding us back from pressing the reset button with anything, if we truly wanted to is ourselves. Understandably, we’re all in different situations that add complexities into the mix, however, life is too short to exchange 5 days in misery, for the brevity of 2 days of perceived freedom.
When I was 25, everything I thought I knew about worked was challenged. I’d been inspired by someone who was wholly energised and passionate about their work, continually crafting new ideas, and exploring innovative tools and methods. By being exposed to their perspective and approach to work, I learned one of my most important lessons about life.
It’s never too late to find meaningful and energising work that you believe in. Meaningful work comes with having a true purpose and involves creating value for others.
Once you find this, the work you do both excites you and allows you to grow. It’s beyond work. It forms part of who you are.
There’s no time limit to reinventing yourself. Inspired by the mentor and feeling emptiness in my own self, I leapt and decided to leave my role at the bank. Inherently, I knew what I was doing wasn’t my calling. Still, it was a tough decision, but one that I had to take. What surprised me most was that I had support from my conservative family and friends too. I had allies on my side.
Television stylist Jennie Mai has mentioned in her podcast that, “Sometimes you think you’ve sprouted when really you’ve been planted.” To find vision and purpose, you not only have to find something that aligns with your values, but you also have to enjoy the journey. You just have to take the first step. While we’re familiar with the seemingly overnight successes of the world’s biggest unicorns or super famous people, none of that would be a reality without the hard work and grit that these people would need to get them there. Most people only see the end. But those who experience it — you, you must be there for the journey.
Does every fibre of your body believe in what you do? Identify the blockers that are holding you back. If you make some tough decisions, how can you get closer to where it is you want to be or feel?
Lesson 4: Success is determined by your routine and rituals.
Many believe that structuring your life and making plans takes the spontaneity and fun out of things. In fact, by creating structure, you actually allow yourself to have more time to seek pleasure and rest. Here are some mini-lessons that fall under the umbrella of this precept:
- Your diet isn’t just what you eat. It’s what you consume visually, digitally, and auditorily. The apps, news feeds, content, and people around you. Every one of them even unconsciously impacts your thoughts and decisions. A bad tenant that occupies your mind is difficult to evict. We often consume content out of habit or to fill a void of silence, instead of embracing and processing our thoughts. I’ve come to learn that a moment of silence can be truly deafening. You can learn so much about yourself. Just as you would nourish your body with good food and exercise if you choose to feed your mind content, curate it so that it’s the green kale of the mind. Avoid fake news. Follow people who send a great message and inspire. Let go of toxic people. A digital detox may yield benefits in the short term, but how can you maintain a lifestyle that cultivates strong mental stability consistently?
- Procrastination or avoidance will eventually catch up to you. It’s a debt that accrues interest. Ironically, I had come up with this ’10 lessons from my 20s’ article months ago in late 2020. But after several excuses, holidays, and false starts, I found myself scrambling against the clock. However, despite an intense period that I was going through with work and side projects, I wanted to keep the promise to myself. *The promise is that I would finish this article by my birthday, February 19*. The debt that accrues from inaction isn’t just what you haven’t achieved, but also the erosion of your personal self-image. The promises you make to yourself are the most important because they form your personal credibility. If you struggle with analysis paralysis or overwhelm, do one thing at a time. Break things down into smaller steps, or 2-minute tasks. The most important promises are the ones you make to yourself.
- Your intention determines your direction and values. Do you value growth? Or do you value comfort? While there is a time for either, you can’t have both simultaneously. What you choose to do in your spare time without the presence of others reveals a lot about who you are. Cultivate habits that allow for the top 3 things you value. A friend once said, and originally attributed to Jim Collins, “If you have more than 3 priorities in your life this year, you have too many”. If you’re attempting to juggle 5 balls simultaneously, you’ll likely drop them all.
- Routine aids momentum. In his book Think Like a Monk, author and speaker Jay Shetty states that location has memory, and time has energy. It’s the same reason why you shouldn’t eat in your bedroom or why it’s easier to stick to an exercise schedule if you work out at the same time each day. Not only your environment, but the power of consistency is incredibly important in your success. I created a specific routine during COVID lockdown last year that I still follow today. I find that if I don’t schedule my workouts or prioritise them in the morning, I’m more likely to miss a workout or make an excuse for doing one. By developing automatic rituals and systems, you remove the mental power required to make the tough decisions and instead focus on the task at hand. Skills compound with consistency. As do bad habits. According to James Clear, author of bestseller, Atomic Habits, if you structure your life and aim to make 1% incremental improvements each day, you’ll be 38 times better off after one year than when you first started.
Lesson 5: You can’t change anyone
When I was 27, I was forced to face one of my most salient personal lessons to date: I can’t change anyone. At that age, I’d been on a two-year rollercoaster with someone. I was romanticising a vision of him from the past, and projecting a future of what “could have been”. I was hedging bets for my love life on a one-day wager; that one day he’d be the person I not only deserved but wanted.
Against my own choice (my stubborn self would’ve kept persisting otherwise), space and time allowed for me to gain enhanced clarity. You can’t change anybody. You really can’t. Any change that happens within somebody has to come from themselves. Paradoxically, you can’t give something more of what they don’t appreciate as it has the opposite effect. People instinctively value the things that they’ve earned more than the things they’ve been given. What space also told me is that when sh*t hits the proverbial fan, it’s way more character-revealing than what you learn about someone than when things are rosy. Jean Dominique Martin said, “People come into your life for a reason, season, or a lifetime.” This person had already left their season in my life, so why was I painstakingly holding on?
While people’s behaviours aren’t always perfect. It’s their intention that matters. Trust is more about intention than it is about ability. Of course, you wouldn’t want someone flaky or unreliable, but it’s their intention that counts. Often people’s actions such as their inability to commit or propensity to cheat have more to do with them than it ever has to do with you. Never let someone’s rejection of you lead you to reject yourself.
Today, I am in a much more loving relationship. While it still faces its own set of challenges, it’s energising, and I have never felt more at ease and like myself. When someone likes you, you’ll know, otherwise, you’ll always be confused.
Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you’ll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others. — Jacob M Braude
Lesson 6: Life is an endless loop of unlearned lessons
One must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Life doesn’t always give you what you want. It gives you what you need. For me, the relationship I experienced in lesson 5, was deja vu of other prior unresolved lessons I had to learn. Life repeats because we generally emulate what we know or are familiar with, and our decisions are a reflection of our personal beliefs.
The key to breaking the cycle of unlearned lessons is self-awareness. What are your internal beliefs about yourself, your values, and what you deserve/will tolerate? Secondly, evaluate what situations, experiences, and people you’re surrounding yourself with. Is the environment conducive to you living a healthy life, or is it contributory to you experiencing the same things over and over? If you detach yourself from the situation, what would you want a friend or loved one to do if they were in the exact situation?
Difficult times, pain, and lessons all serve a purpose. If we don’t learn what we’re meant to, these experiences tend to repeat themselves. One of my cyclical lessons was that if I didn’t stick to my standards in a relationship around exclusivity, trust, and communication, I would keep facing people who would question and push these boundaries. Once I took a stance, the path was perspicuous.
The difficult experiences we face eventually become our strength and blessings. Stoic philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius ruled in extremely turbulent times. He could’ve given up. He could’ve only thought about power and himself just like many of his predecessors did in those times. Instead, he chose to “Do the right thing. For the rest doesn’t matter”, and as a result, remains one of the most respected and quoted thought leaders of today.
Nothing in life comes for free. However, difficult experiences shape you to become the person you are. Can you grasp the lessons life is trying to teach you?
Lesson 7: Detach from closure. The truth untold will eventually reveal itself.
As humans, we tend to ruminate on unfinished business; that person who left without an explanation, the object that was lost suddenly, the opportunity that fell through our fingertips. When we hold onto expectations of how things are or should be, we’re blind to the truth even if reality tells us otherwise.
By detaching from the need to know everything and be in control, we allow for the truth to emerge. If someone leaves, if something fails, if there is a loss. There are answers in that absence. We should seek to understand what we can, not dwell on the things outside the remit of our control. Instead of fighting to hold on to our ideals of what was or what could be, we can only live in the now.
Detach
Act
Observe
Closure is overrated. In relationships, in business, in politics, or even the law, the truth often depends on who’s asking the question. Focus on being a master of reality. That is:
Reality = Expectations — what actually happens.
When the truth does come knocking on your door, you’re able to observe it, act, or let it pass. The end game is not to wait for truth or stubbornly hold on. But to be so present in the now and moving forward.
Detachment isn’t indifference either. It’s that we can appreciate things as they come and go without reacting to when the status of things changes. The main benefit of detachment is that it relieves you of unnecessary stress and disconcerting emotion that comes with expectation and the need for closure.
Focus on what you can control and one of the biggest weapons in your arsenal is your mindset. Build a life that is focused on you now, so that when the truth does eventually come, it doesn’t really matter at all.
Lesson 8: The narrative people create of you isn’t yours to own.
One of the downsides of personal reinvention is that you begin to outgrow people in terms of their values, motivations, and perspectives.
Between 2016–2018, I had falling outs with two of my girlfriends. One of them I had known as far back as kindergarten. I did my best to navigate through the complex disagreement, speaking with kindness and clarity. But they wouldn’t have it. They’d made up their own minds. I was given no further chances to explain.
For the longest time, I couldn’t comprehend why I was so upset. Eventually, it dawned on me that the fights had taken such a toll because I couldn’t control their perception of me. I didn’t want to be painted as the bad guy in their picture.
I cared less about losing two friends than losing control of what people thought of me. Wow.
American sociologist, Charles Horton Cooley once said, “I am who I think you think I am.” Just let that settle in for a moment. We perceive ourselves based on what we think other people think of us. Losing two friends was hard, but it was the loss of control over my self-image is what burned most.
With more processing, I eventually employed detachment strategies which included asking myself; “Are these people you truly want to be around?” and “Do you need these people in your life?” The truth was, despite my heartache, we had grown distant in many other ways. Their modes of reality were different from mine. Neither was right or wrong, they were simply incongruent.
By letting go of my need to be liked and given my chance to defend my character I learned:
- Save explanations for those who are determined to understand you. True friends or people in your life will do so. Give silence to those who are determined to misunderstand. You don’t owe them anything.
- It’s not your responsibility to control people’s perception of you, nor should it be. The version of yourself that you paint is what actually matters. This doesn’t mean never saying sorry or owning up to mistakes. It’s about being authentic and owning up to shortcomings, but not putting yourself down in the process. People’s thoughts and words about you — whether good or bad — is their business.
You’re all you’ll ever have so stop trying to be everyone’s cup of tea. Cultivate the best version of you, for yourself.
Lesson 9: Your perception is everything.
There’s a Buddhist parable of the second arrow that refers to how people experience pain twice; first mentally, second physically. Its lesson is that pain we experience is exasperated in our minds far beyond any physical pain we could ever endure.
Vietnamese monk, Thich Quang Duc, was famously captured setting himself alight in a busy Saigon intersection in 1963. His act sent a worldwide message regarding the South Vietnamese government’s persecution of Buddhists at the time. What’s incredible about this story is that during the whole ordeal, Thich sat in self-immolation completely still. There wasn’t a flinch or sound that emitted from him. Thich had trained himself so much for years that he internalised and remained calm for the entire time.
While we may not be a burning monk, an antidote to overcoming pain in our daily lives is gratitude. Expressing gratitude is not just about saying thanks, but taking in each moment as a gift. The ripple effect of kindness is exponential, with those who practice gratitude regularly citing a 25% increased happiness.
The second component of evaluating your perception is to diagnose your beliefs. Do your thoughts genuinely reflect your values or are they what society or someone else expects of you? If we don’t regularly question our beliefs, we live on autopilot, and experience default settings that make our reality inauthentically empty.
How you experience life is greatly dependent upon your perception. How do you frame your perception and actions to become authentic and antifragile despite life’s challenges?
Lesson 10: Run your own race, not anybody else’s.
Australian nurse Bronnie Ware stated in her book “The Top Five Regrets of Dying”, that one of the most common regrets of those on their deathbeds was that they wished they had the courage to live authentically, instead of what others expected of them. As the years of my 20s have come to an end, this lesson is one that I’ve always known, and truly come to embrace. Similarly, one of my elder sisters will often say to me, that we should all “beat to the sound of our own drum.”
For me, this lesson can be broken down into the following:
When dealing with comparison
At some stage in life, particularly when we’re younger, we’ve all experienced the green-eyed monster at some point. We compare ourselves to someone else and in today’s digital age, we face ridiculously increased amounts of social pressure and comparison due to the rise of social media. You’re no longer comparing yourself to Suzy at school or Ethan at the gym, you’re now comparing yourself to thousands — if not millions of people on a constant scroll.
In a casual podcast conversation with his brother Stephen, relationship coach and speaker Matthew Hussey captured my attention by saying that “No one is better off for having more resources than you.” Someone may have a better start to life, but it doesn’t make them better. Look at what you’ve learned and achieved. What have you done with what you’ve been given? What life’s lotto game has given you doesn’t matter, what matters is what you do with it.
Similarly, in his famous 2005 Stanford speech, Steve Jobs says, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”
Possessing true self-esteem means that you have the ability to filter out and choose what you want to expose yourself to, the only race you’re running is one to be the best version of yourself. Mentally strong people can acknowledge their vulnerabilities, embrace feedback, and treat everyone with respect.
In life, we’re all running our own race to the best of our abilities.
When dealing with feelings of inadequacy
Similarly to comparison, feelings of inadequacy are hard to manage because they come from this inbuilt belief that we’re not enough.
Self-acceptance comes from acknowledging the things you have esteem about. For me, despite my imperfections, I have a good heart and a lot to offer the world. In my interactions and daily actions, I always strive to treat people with kindness. Knowing this is what helped shape my core confidence.
Vulnerability researcher and author Brené Brown quotes that “belonging isn’t just about fitting in, it’s about being the authentic version of yourself.” Time is the most valuable resource in your life, so focus on cultivating value by helping others and working on things that make you happy. Perfectionism isn’t valuing quality, it’s adhering to the need to be in control.
***
In the days leading up to my 30th birthday, I couldn’t help but possess wistful feelings of melancholy and nostalgia. Some of my friends would say I had a mini existential crisis. I was neither happy nor sad. But during a period with a lot going on, I felt overstimulated and numb.
Taking a moment to pause and reflect, I ran through this evaluation in my head — “What have I done? What have I achieved? What mistakes and lessons have I learned? What could I have done differently?” Instead of focusing on regret or loss, I focused my mindset on being grateful and disciplined.
Rather than just hoping for my 30s to be a period of continued growth, accomplishment, and joy, I am determined to cultivate structure, make decisions, and act. This is to ensure that despite all the challenges I am to face, the next period of my life can be one that is as humbling, growth-filled, and as breathtaking as the last.
How often have you reflected on various segments of your life, and what have you learned to make now and the future better?
This post is specially dedicated to someone, whose distance has had a greater impact on me than I ever could ever imagine, and who will never get to experience this next milestone in this life as we know it. You did well.
