What are your key takeaways from the year 2020? While we are busy criticizing and blaming the year 2020 for all the things bad and horrible happening to us, have we by any chance derived some life lessons from this year?
Although this year 2020 sucked, I have had a few life-changing realizations which I will remember for a lifetime.
In this short blog, I am going to share my key takeaways from the year 2020 and I would love to know yours as well.
9 key takeaways from the year 2020
Besides the below mentioned 9 takeaways, I also had some mindful realizations in these 12 months process. I accepted that it is ok to put on weight and take your time to work on it.
It is ok to do things at your own pace but do it. It is perfectly fine to say No to things that don’t spark any joy in your life. It is important to work on self-improvement as it is a continuous process, the more we improve our inner world, the more our outer world gains balance.
This year was hard and it took away lives, jobs, relations, money, and a lot of mental peace but still, it gave us a few reality checks and lessons we can learn from. I chose to learn from it and below are my drawing out of the year 2020:
1.) Nature has its own way of sanitizing itself
Let the human community protect the environment for their own survival and the biodiversity around, says Bhagwad Gita. But what if humans fail to protect the environment? Fail to care for mother nature?
What is the use of campaigns like #endofplastic #saveearth #saveplanet #savewater when we are not mindful of our environment, the first place we live in, and the very basis of our survival?
With all that we have witnessed in 2020, I believed that nature has its own way of sanitizing itself.
2.) The need for developing coping mechanisms
Besides health challenges, the quarantine, work from home, and isolation stress, 2020 was a real test of humanity and I saw it decaying with each passing day.
It began to question our conditioning, how badly we lack to face failures, stress, and express our feelings. How we are expected to be perfect and manage everything under different circumstances when we are never prepared for any of it.
We badly need to develop our coping mechanisms to counter-part any situation and stand still till the storm passes away.
3.) Building resilience among our children and making them life-ready
Are we making our kids life-ready? As soon as the lockdown was announced there was this whole noise on social media showcasing the best home cook food, DIYs, online classes, how learning coding is so important for a child’s development, youngest author, youngest speaker, and how can a child survive without studying from online apps.
Not everyone wants to become a coding expert and launch his/her own app. What is this? Marketing gimmick to mislead children just before they are trying to figure out what exactly they want to do?
Besides all this social drama, I felt a need of building resilience in our children and prepare them for the future by nurturing them with proper life-skills. Continuous improvement happens with continuous training of mind, body, and soul, after that they can decide if they want to code or decode their lives.
4.) The importance of following a passion
One of the major key takeaways from the year 2020 is following your passion. You must have a passion which will keep you going even in your hard time, even if it is not helping you earn much, read it twice to understand it.
Being a writer, I know how difficult it is to earn a living from this writing business and even today profession like writing, art, blogging is not well-received.
But writing, art, and doodling helped me a lot in my tough times. Art has a very positive impact on our mental health, as good as a stress buster. So, identify your passion and keep it as your side-kick.
Even if you are working in a high-paying job and living a great life, you must create something of your own, a happy place, you can access whenever you feel low, sad, and lonely.
5.) Having a purpose in life
It is important to have a purpose in your life, it keeps your focus on the things that matter. It keeps you busy. It keeps your mind occupied.
In this year 2020, I found my real purpose. I have been writing on Mental Health, stress management, and relationship stress for almost 3 years now. With 3 blog sites and over 700 articles, I am more firm on continuing my journey to raise my voice against the stigmas and taboos attached to mental health.
Take time to identify your passion, imbibe it with a purpose and follow it, follow it every single day, it will never leave you.
6.) Being grateful for what we have
One of the most important key takeaways from the year 2020. When less looked more and gratefulness topped the chart. In the initial months when the COVID-19 outbreak was announced and there was a lot of fear, I use to wake up anxious, worrying about my family, parents, and friends.
Later, with the passing months, I used to wake up being grateful to see everyone safe, fine, and healthy. I strike a chord with minimalism and I am liking it.
Decluttering unhelpful things and expressing gratitude for what I have helped me to gain self-control.
7.) Looking at the brighter side of life
“Always look for the bright side in life”. I have a poster in my room quoting this that I and my daughter read and remind each other.
We always have something to be grateful for, we always have a ray of hope, no matter how thin, but it is hard to look at the bright side when things are gloomy and unfavorable to the core.
But hey, it helps. It lessens down our anxiety, it shifts our focus to things we still have and can work on. It helps us to reflect and gear up. One day at a time.
8.) Standing for the things you believe in
COVID-19 came with a lot of complications and we were bound to form a new normal. A normal we never knew, never imagined but yes, we did it. We survived this pandemic.
But did you realize that all this leads to a “twindemic” on a global level, COVID-19 impact plus mental illness escalation?
Standing for the things we believe in helps us to take complete charge of our lives and work in unfavorable conditions too. While we could have stopped, we continued and gave our story a different ending, This is what we need to do daily, today, and forever.
9.) Nothing is permanent in this world
Not even our worries, problems, and crisis. If our jobs can go, our relationships can end, our money can go then anything can go away from us.
This is how life is, mean, unpredictable, and hard. But in this impermanence, I found that there remains a lot of inner-work undone and unattended.
If you are tired of temporary people then you must work on a permanent soul residing within you. We fail to value ourselves, we disregard our self-worth and we chase wrong decisions, wrong relationships, and sulk, crib, complain, feel guilty about all the things that could have ended well if we would have done it in a different way.
Be in NOW, now is all we have and we can only control ourselves. We cannot control others. We cannot control their actions, but we can control our reactions.
Being mindful, upgrading myself, and making conscious choices helped me survive this year.
What are your key takeaways from the year 2020? I would love to know 🙂
Priyanka Nair is the author of 26 Days 26 Ways for a Happier you and Ardhaviram. An NLP practitioner and Founder of Sanity Daily, helping you prioritize your mental health. Let’s build a happy community.
