How To Become Comfortable With Yourself
Reflections On My 30th Birthday
As I type this I just turned 30 years old and if you’re reading this and it’s still Sunday July 19 where you are, make sure you wish me a happy birthday 
.
I had a conversation leading up to my 30th birthday with a fellow 29 year old who was heading towards her 30th with a little trepidation. She had just divorced her husband, so needless to say she was experiencing significant changes in her life.
Personally I don’t look at 30 as a big deal, although there was one comment this particular girl made that caught my attention. She said as people turn 30 they usually are in one of two places – they have their “shit” together or they don’t. I told her I was about as happy as I could remember in my life as I turned 30, so her conclusion was I was one of those people who has their “shit together”. Yay for me.
It Was The Worst Of Times
It’s natural to reflect on your life as you get older, especially at milestone ages. If I look over my twenties I can certainly say it has been a wild ride, full of highs and lows.
I left my teenage years and entered my twenties while I was at university, not really enjoying my studies, not very motivated by much and just uncomfortable in my own skin.
The problem when your own self worth is low, is that you have great difficulty digging yourself out. You generally attract experiences to enhance your low self esteem because you view the world in “sad” glasses. Until you can switch the conversation going on inside your head from negative to positive, your experiences in the outside world will reflect this, further enhancing your negative belief structure.
In order to truly become confident, you need to have experiences that have a positive impact on you. There’s only so far re-framing your interpretation of events and thinking positive can take you, eventually you have to actually have the positive experiences to build your confidence.
As a result of my dogged determination to remain unhappy, I experienced many low-points. I’d have to say my time with panic attacks and anxiety during my early twenties was one of my least-favorite periods.
As always, thanks to the wonderful world of polarities that we exist in, the trauma caused by these experiences forced me to seek out answers to big questions. If I didn’t suffer the pain, I wouldn’t have gone looking for answers to certain questions either – you need the ying in order to see the contrast and thus fully experience the yang.
I won’t go into detail here, but if you want to read more about my experience with panic and the resultant search for happiness, you can read this –
During my early twenties I had a few part time jobs and experimented with different web projects. My most successful at this time was my Magic: The Gathering card game website, which I grew to the largest site of its kind in Australia and then later sold for $13,000, the first big website deal I made.
I also started my proofreading business BetterEdit.com in my early twenties, which I would invest serious time into growing, including trips to university campuses in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Hawaii, Vancouver and Toronto to promote using posters.
From 20 to 25 years old I spent a lot of time playing with different projects and gained a lot of experience. I also began my study of Internet marketing during this time, and delved into more philosophical and spiritual studies too, as a means to figure out why the world is the way it is and what I could do to be happier in it.
I don’t look back on my first five years in my twenties as the most fun of times. Sure there were good times in there, but much of the experience was sabotaged by my attitude. I’m glad to have gone through that period for the growth it provided for me as a person, but I wouldn’t want to go back there again.
It Was The Best Of Times
A clear contrast to my first five years in my twenties, from 25 to 30 my life went from good to better to great, and thankfully, it’s still going!
It’s funny how as you get your “shit” together, people start to look at you as if you have answers to a question that has been bugging them for a long time – what to do with their life. Read the rest of this entry >>
