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In this episode, I discuss 29 life lessons I have learnt over the years that we should all try and learn, embody and live by.
Podcast Transcript
Welcome to the Mindful Soul Collective Podcast, a safe space for your healing.
I'm your host Shorina, a counsellor, well-being coach, multi-bus owner and mum.
I'm here to talk all things mind, body and soul.
You can expect conversations on mental health, mindfulness, mindset, healing and whole body wellness.
I've completely redefined my relationship to myself and to my life.
And now it's your turn.
Hello and welcome back to the Mindful Soul Collective Podcast.
The day this goes live is my 29th birthday. So I thought it would be a little bit fun to do an episode on the 29 lessons that I have learned throughout my 29 years of wonderful and glorious life. They're in no particular order, they're just ordered as they came to me some are a bit longer, some are mind expand on, some are just a sentence or two. I really just wrote the notes for this episode based on intuition and trusted that whatever comes through at the time of recording is exactly what's needed. So let's get straight into it.
Lesson one, life ebbs and flows. They're going to be good days, but they're also going to always be bad days. But a bad day doesn't indicate a bad life. We are going to have ups and downs. Great things are going to happen and then shitty things are going to happen and that's part of life.
Lesson two, the relationship I have with myself is the most important relationship I have
with anybody. I cannot be the mother, the partner, the counsellor, coach, friend, boss, leader or anything that I want to be if I don't take care of me first and foremost. Every relationship in my life actually starts with the relationship I have to myself.
Lesson three, it's okay to ask for help. I spent so many years of my life thinking that I couldn't ask for help and that really meant that I was choosing the harder option for all of those years. The second that I started asking for help, whether it was big things or small things, life got easier for me.
Lesson four, self awareness is a superpower. When I was able to start utilizing self awareness as a tool in my life, things really shifted. I was able to heal trauma faster.
I shifted limiting beliefs faster. I felt more connected to myself and my purpose. My parenting was easier. Everything just got easier when I started to be self-aware.
Lesson five, we can feel two things at once. For so long I found myself feeling like I could only experience one thing at a time. So whether that was feelings of accepting of what I have is enough, but also wanting more, feelings of being scared, but also excited, feelings of being tired, but still somehow really inspired. You can experience more than one thing at a time and when we are able to recognize the importance and the power of the word and our opportunities are literally going to tenfold.
Lesson six, life is not about eliminating bad feelings or bad experiences. We can't act as if they're not going to happen and that we can just be happy every day because I am sorry to say that is not possible for anyone. They're all going to have days where we're sad, angry, anxious or any other emotion that you want to deem as bad. We're going to have experiences that are painful, that hurt us, that feel hard and might even be traumatic.
It's part of life. So instead of trying to eliminate them, let's manage them. Let's create a support system and use tools and techniques to manage, control, lessen the effects of these bad feelings or experiences we'll come across in our life. We can't eliminate them from happening, but we can manage how we're going to respond to them and when I was able to recognize that, the whole game changed.
Lesson seven, I was never broken. When I was depressed and suicidal, when I was alone, when I self-harmed, when I failed, when I was cheated on, when I lost everything I owned in a storm, when I had a back injury after a car accident, the day I tried to take my life or the alcohol I drank, the drugs I took, I was never broken. didn't need to be fixed. I needed love and support. And that's probably one of the biggest lessons that I've ever learned.
Lesson eight, I will never find self-love through self-hate. If you want to embody true self-love, you need to stop the self-hatred. And that means you need to let go of nasty comments about yourself. You need to stop breaking promises to yourself. You need to stop refusing to accept compliments, stop nitpicking at yourself, stop not prioritizing yourself and your health. And you need to stop letting other people treat you poorly.
If you want to get to a place of self-love, you need to stop hating yourself. And that was a journey that I went on and I'm still on, you know, it's something that comes up all the time for me. Every time I look in the mirror and I don't like something or I have a pimple or, you
know, I need to get my eyebrows done, that turns into this self-hatred of nitpicking and putting myself down. It's part of life. It's going to come up. But we need to remember and I need to remember that self-hate is never going to lead to the self-love that we all want.
Lesson nine, it's okay to forgive myself. I have done many things and I have said many things that I'm not proud of. I am positive that I've hurt people along the way, but I'm also just as positive that I hurt myself a lot. As in physically I self-harmed, I tried to take my life, I drank too much, I party too much, I did too many drugs, and then emotionally I put myself down for years, I dated the wrong people, I made terrible decisions, but it was and it is okay to forgive myself for all of those things.
Lesson ten, life is happening for me, not to me. So I want to believe it in the moment or not, what's happening is for me. It's for me to learn something, to find something out, to experience something, to connect to myself better, to be a better mother, a better counsellor. Whatever is happening is for a reason. If I hadn't had the roof come off of my house in that storm and lost everything I owned, I would have never met my partner. If I wasn't in a car accident, that put me on bed rest for three months, I would have never done my studies for counselling and I would not be here talking to you today. But at the time, it didn't feel like that, it felt like, fuck me. I just lost everything I own, I have no insurance, my life sucks, and also, fuck me again, because I was just in a car accident, my back is killing me and that's it, my life's over. But that happened for a reason and that has led me to where I am today.
Lesson eleven, it's safe to say no. I don't need a reason, you don't need a reason, you can just say no. You don't even need to give an excuse, you don't need to have a reason within yourself, if you just don't want to do something, great, don't do it.
Lesson twelve. Only I have the power to write my story, nobody else. This one is something that I have been working on a lot with my own counsellor and my own
coach. I have found a lot of trouble trying to put my story into words and accepting that the things that happened to me, I'm allowed to talk about. I hold this fear and this anxiety that I don't want to hurt other people by telling my story. But my story is my truth and only I have the power to write that.
Lesson thirteen. The words I speak about myself matter. My subconscious mind, your subconscious mind does not know if you are joking or not. If you go out of the house and you say, oh, I look like a homeless person today, what does that actually mean? Is that a bad thing to you? I assume you're saying it out of sarcasm and as if it's a joke because you're, I don't know, you didn't do your makeup, you didn't do your hair, you're wearing trackies, whatever it is. But if that is a negative thought for you, your mind believes that.
Your subconscious mind is believing those words. So the words that I speak to myself that you speak to yourself, they matter and we need to pay attention to them.
Lesson fourteen. Healing should be for ourselves. I want to heal because I want and I deserve a happy, healthy and thriving life and that's enough. Are other people in my life going to reap the benefits of me doing this work? Yes, absolutely. My kids, my partner, I'm sure my friends, my family, it's going to ripple out and it's going to be great for my, everyone around me as well. But I'm not doing it for them. I'm doing it for me because I deserve to heal.
Lesson fifteen. The trauma that I went through never made me stronger. The trauma I went through taught me lessons and it showed me different ways of surviving but I am the one who pushed through. I am the one that experienced the trauma. I am the one that went through the lessons and the pain and what felt like torture and I am the one that survived. The trauma that I went through is not the reason I am who I am today.
Did it teach me things? Yes, absolutely. Would I be here without the trauma? Probably not. But the person I am today is because of me. It's because how I took the lessons, what I did the lessons did with the lessons more so. I am the reason I am the person I am.
Lesson sixteen. Spirituality is not just religion. It's not just something that's woo woo. Spirituality for me was finding a connection with something bigger than myself and it has
changed my life in more ways than one.
Lesson seventeen. My passion doesn't need to be motherhood. I love my kids with my whole entire heart. They are my world. But I also love my work. I love my clients. I love the way that I show up in the world, the impact that I'm making and that's okay. Am I passionate about being a mum and being a great, attentive, caring, loving, present mum?
Yes. I am passionate about that. I am passionate about showing up and being there for my kids. But I am also that passionate about showing up and being loving and caring and nurturing and being there for my clients. My me being a mother and going through motherhood is important to me. I love it and I don't want anyone to take this the wrong way. I love being a mum. I love my kids. But being a mum is not what I was put on this earth for. It doesn't have to be my number one passion.
Lesson eighteen. I came a point where I had to let go. I had to let go of the lifestyle I was living, of the beliefs I held, of the relationships I had, of pushing and hustling and the negative influences. I wanted to let go of the pain that I was carrying. So there were other things I had to let go of as well. I think that this is something that is going to come up time and time again for me, where I get to a point where it's time to let go.
Lesson nineteen. Sometimes all I need to do to feel better is to get out of my head and get into my body. When I move my body my mind is lighter. That is fact.
Lesson twenty. Crying is incredible. If you ever worked with me in any way, shape or form and you've cried in a session, you will know I am here for it. I love the crying. I support it.
I want you to cry. And the reason that I say that is because it is so important for us to let our emotions out instead of holding them in. So next time you want to cry, cry. Let yourself without judgment, shame or trying to add some kind of meaning to it. To let the emotions out, see what happens and see how you feel. I love crying. I'll cry in front of anyone. I don't hide myself when I cry around my kids because crying is natural. Crying is not something to be ashamed of.
Lesson twenty one. Things don't always happen on our timeline. But if they're meant for us, they will come to us.
Lesson twenty two. There is no such thing as perfect in my relationships, in my parenting, in my work, in my appearance, in my life. Nothing is ever going to be perfect and that's okay.
Lesson twenty three. The small things in life are the important things in life. If we all were able just to enjoy the small things in life like the hug of a loved one, that soft feeling of new towels, the smell of a new book, the flowers on your walk, if we can all enjoy those small things that maybe right now are insignificant to you, we will find ourselves so much more present and happy.
Lesson twenty four. Not everyone is going to like me, but as long as I like me, nothing else matters.
Lesson twenty five. Everything in myself was one of the scariest things I have ever done and also one of the greatest things I have ever done. It was the first step in this beautiful magical journey. It was the first time that I stood up for myself, that I said, no, I'm important. I want to feel better. I want to do better. I want to be better. So investing in myself was scary because I backed myself for the first time I put money into it. It's scary as shit, but it was also incredible because I have come so far. I have learned so much.
I have grown so much.
Lesson twenty six. Not everybody deserves access to me. I don't care who they are.
I don't care if I should have them in my life based on maybe the time that they've been
around, you know, people from school and things like that. I don't care who people are.
They do not deserve access to me based on anything. They don't automatically deserve to be in my life because of X, Y, Z. The people in my life respect me and they love me and they care for me and they empower me and they're there for me. And if they're not, then I have no problem letting them go.
Lesson twenty seven. We should all live life with the determination of a toddler. My boys will sit there and build towers and castles and rockets for hours, specifically my eldest, Ezra. He's five. He will build this beautiful big robot or I don't know, rocket. Like he makes these beautiful creations. That's what he calls them. If the house has a rocket on the side and then there's a car park for the bus that we own and there's a pool and all these beautiful things and then my two year old Wyatt will just run along, jump on it, smash it down. But then Ezra builds it again. He builds it again and again and again until it's that beautiful, perfect castle again, rocket again, house again. Doesn't matter how many times maybe it falls down or Wyatt crashes it down. He builds it again. Imagine if we all as adults had the same determination. Imagine if we didn't give up on anything at the sign of a small inconvenience. Imagine if we kept pushing ourselves and trying again and again and again. I want to live life with the determination of a toddler. So I show up. I show up. I show up. I show up.
Lesson 28. I don't want a life that is okay or fine. And I've spoken about this a lot on the podcast and on my social media, on my, I'm sure it's on my website somewhere. I don't want a life that is just okay. I want a life that is extraordinary. I want to have relationships that are supportive, loving, empowering and filled with adventure. I want to be the kind of mum who raises kind people and who's there for their kids whenever they want or they need. I want to wake up feeling excited and thrilled for the day ahead. I want to feel healthy. I want to feel energized. I want to trust myself and be self aware and present and constantly grow. I want to show up for you guys. I want to make an impact in your life, even if it's in the smallest, tiniest way. I want to live a life that is beyond my wildest dreams. I want a life that is extraordinary and I deserve a life that is extraordinary.
I will not accept fine or okay.
Lesson 29, the last lesson, which I think is my favorite, I make a difference in the
world, in big ways and small ways. I am important and I matter.
I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Lots of little truth bombs and things dropped. I hope something resonated with you. I'm sure it did. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Great chat to me on Instagram. Tell me which lesson stood out to you the most and maybe what's your biggest lesson in life? Even if you don't tell me, sit with that. Try and think of what is the biggest lesson you have learned.
If you loved this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories. Share it with a friend, a loved one and leave a review. Those things mean so much to me and this beautiful podcast and the things that I'm doing and creating.
So thank you.
And lots of love and support.
I'm off to celebrate my birthday and we'll chat next week.
Bye.
With love & support,
Shorina | Mindful Soul Collective
Counsellor & Wellbeing Coach
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