We are constantly changing. It’s important to look back and identify how much you’ve grown.

Nothing ever stays the same. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that.

The days are long and drawn out. It makes you feel like you’re frozen in time forever. Looking ahead, all you can think about is how much further there is to go. But only when you look back, do you realize how far you’ve come.

I want to talk about change. So many outside factors have changed for me in the past five years, but that’s not what I want to dwell on. Rather, I want to reflect upon how much life has changed on an internal level.

When people talk about life changes, it’s so externally focused. Your home, your job, your relationship, your wardrobe and hairstyle, your environment and the people who surround you — there’s always going to be something about it that becomes different overtime. What can you say that has changed for you beneath all of that?

This is my list of ways that I feel like I have changed on an internal level. And I invite you to do the same.

P.s. for context, five years ago was October 2018 and I was about to turn twenty-four. Today is October 2023, and, you do the math.

I’m a lot more open

I’m a lot more open about the person I am. I’m now much less hesitant to show people my true self. I don’t hold back the same comments or opinions that I used to. And it’s not because I expect people to understand me — it’s knowing that people may not understand me, and knowing that that’s okay.

And as you get older, you realize how short most people will be in your life. Most people move homes, move jobs, move locations, etc. Or simply, people get busy and drop out of your life. When I meet someone, they could be here for the rest of my life, they could be gone tomorrow, or anywhere in between. So, life is too short to hold back who you are. You want people to remember you, the real you.

I’m more willing to discuss my interests and passions, even if they are unpopular. I’m quicker to say what I’m thinking instead of going over it a hundred times in my head to make sure it sounds okay. I can speak a lot now without filter and without overthinking, and that’s very freeing.

I’m slower to anger

I’ve definitely let my emotions get the worst of me before and I can say that I’ve grown from that. I still have occasional moments when I want to become irrationally angry, but I’m better now at detaching myself when it feels unsafe.

Some people may be surprised to hear, but it has cost me, or nearly cost me, good friendships in the past. I’ve lashed out at people when I projected something onto them that wasn’t their fault (or wasn’t entirely their fault.)

I wasn’t always thinking of the future — and now I am very well aware of how one small moment of anger can burn your entire future. Emotions are important, but they also lie to us and make us believe that the current moment is all that exists. So, it’s really easy to forget about consequences when you’re so wrapped up in a feeling that you believe is going to last literally forever.

I’ve found more peace

I’ve found more peace and acceptance than I had five years ago. I remember feeling really worried back then about making the wrong choices, creating a life that I’d end up regretting. I felt really paralyzed, like I couldn’t make a single move without someday regretting it, so I just stood there frozen.

But recently, I’ve reached the point where I know that there will be regrets, I know that there will be things that haunt me forever, and that’s fine. I’m not going to let those fears control me. There is no benefit to being scared about the decisions we make.

I am confident in the fact that as humans we learn to adapt. We can go through the hardest challenges and still find a way to survive. We still find things to make us laugh and smile, even at rock bottom. We still find ways to move on.

I’m more centered

I’m not wrapped up in people’s dramas the way that I once was. What I mean is — when people are going through a lot of drama, I’m here for support but I’m not here to get sucked into it.

If people are fighting with each other, I’m not here to take sides and escalate it even further. I stay detached, but not to the point of lacking empathy. You can vent to me about it in privacy and I will agree with you, but I’m not going to get you more worked up and push you to take action. I’m here to let you cool off steam, and that’s all.

I especially notice this from looking at old journal entries. A lot of my journals from back then are filled with “this person is mad at this person because they said this…” “these people are mad that this person did this…” and so forth. I shouldn’t have spent so much energy trying to fight other peoples battles — let them have their own beef. It was all a distraction from facing my own feelings.

I love myself more

I have more love for myself than I did five years ago. And this is on a completely internal level. I believe that I deserve happiness in a way that I didn’t believe for myself back then. I have worked through a lot of buried guilt, finding forgiveness and breaking the cycle of self sabotage.

These past few years were a journey of confronting why I didn’t always want the best for myself. I found so much comfort in chaos, which was breaking me down.

I saw how much that guilt was controlling my life, guilt over the things that I had no control over. I think a lot of us blame ourselves for things that we were innocent victims of. We are so hard on ourselves, we are our own worst critics, and that was especially true for me.

I try to go much easier on myself now. I don’t hold myself to such high expectations anymore. I’m much softer in the way that I speak to myself.

I’m learning to let go

I’m still in the process of learning how to let go of people. And the people I’m specifically talking about are the ones who don’t make an effort to be in your life.

To be completely honest, this is still something that I have to work on more, yet I’m definitely better at it than I was five years ago. I’ve always been the most drawn to people who want to leave, while I take for granted and push away the ones who want to stay. That’s not fair.

We want what we can’t have — that is human nature. The more someone pulls, the more you may want to chase. And so, you have to keep reminding yourself that all of that is an illusion, and how our minds are easily fooled.

I’m ebbing and flowing

I am constantly changing like the moon. I ebb and flow. In some ways, I feel more like my eighteen or nineteen year old self than I do my twenty-three or twenty-four year old self. And vice versa. I go through phases.

Life cycles open and close. Some parts of me grow faster than others. I may regress before I progress. Growth is not a straight line.

Overall, I feel like aging shapes me into a better person. More life experience results in more growth. I always thought that aging would make me bitter, but I’ve found just the opposite.

How have you changed in the past five years?