Turning 35 - Good Things Come with Time When You Follow Your Own Mind

I love a good split. Not the banana ice cream kind, unless you’re dealing me Lactaid like it’s your side hustle, but the type that shocks people in a dance battle, when you strut into the middle of the dance circle that’s formed at a party, look like you ain’t gonna do much cause people are judging your knee agility, and bam, you drop down into jump split on the beat of the song blasting through the speakers. It’s the K.O. move, the “ain’t no way you topping this” party trick that I’ve pulled out from time to time for shock value in my adult years, and just for plain damn fun. 

I actually learned the splits on a serendipitous dare when I was 15. A school mate of mine asked me if I was going to try out for my highschool’s cheerleading team. I looked at her like she had grown two heads - why would she have that idea? She saw something in me that made her think “rah rah cis boom bah” so I thought you know what, why not? The catch though was cheer tryouts were four weeks away and the only split I could do is the ones that were sewn into my cute skirt. 

I was determined to get all the basic jumps and the splits down to be able to try out for the team. 

For four weeks, I spent at least a half hour every day at home focused on getting closer and closer to being able to sit down completely flush to the floor in a split. I was given a few tips on how to slowly train my body into a split from previous cheer team members. It was grueling, muscles screaming, slowly getting closer and closer each day to the goal. 3 ½ weeks in, I was able to do it, and was amazed at my ability to achieve something with the consistent, unsexy process of daily practice. The achievement of stretching my body’s abilities in ways I didn’t think was possible felt very satisfying. It was slow, steady, and boring progress that got me where I needed to be. I also landed a spot on the cheerleading team, becoming co-captain in my two years on the team before I graduated which was the cherry on top. 

Turning 35 this year has made me reflect on finding my own rhythm and following my desires to design my life’s goals at a slower pace with the time I can control (because various privileges and challenges mean we all get a constantly shifting balance of how much we can and can’t control of our time). 

There’s constant noise of what we should be doing with our lives, drilled into our psyche the second we’re out of the womb, from the toys we play with as children, to the messages we consume while entering the workforce. These conventional goals, supported by cultural and societal norms, can disconnect us from what we value, and many times leave us confused, empty, and resentful. 

While aimlessly scrolling Instagram recently, I stumbled across a Psychology Today article about the concept of self-connection. Self-connection is the idea that obtaining high levels of self-awareness, self-alignment, and self-acceptance is critical to happiness, life satisfaction, and well-being. Self-awareness is the ability to be conscious of your internal experiences, thoughts, emotions, sensations, preferences, values, intuitions, resources, goals, and patterns. Self-acceptance is the full acknowledgment and acceptance, without judgment, of self-relevant characteristics and experiences. Self-alignment means you use this self-knowledge to behave in ways that authentically reflect yourself and fulfill your psychological needs. These things are invaluable, but take time and slow growth to occur.

This concept of self-connection hit me in the gut. With each passing year of my life, I realized my self-connection has grown stronger, resulting in more peace of mind and helped me close the gap between my values and how I live and design my life. 

There are four key things that I’ve began to practice over the years, that have taken time and consistent effort, that have increased my self-connection in positive ways, particularly in this year of my life:

Solitude: I’ve spent more time alone this year, compared to any other year of my life. Between traveling solo 15 different times across 6 months for work and other events, to living alone and working as a solopreneur, I got a lot of quality time to spend with myself. In the past, this solo time would have given me some angst because I was always so externally focused and busy to not have to deal with my own inner struggles. But being able to enjoy my own company, and also enjoy the world solo when I didn’t have a friend, partner, or colleague to go do things with, has brought me far more contentment that I would have imagined. I’ve become clearer on my own likes. As a recovering people pleaser who tends to put other people’s needs before my own, space to really figure out my own preferences has been a gift. I’ve become more confident in the ability to make connections with new people in foreign spaces, as attending events solo means I have to step more out of my comfort zone to connect. 

And solitude has also meant the ability to explore creative inclinations without judgment or immediate feedback before a half baked idea is ready for critique. There’s safe play when it’s just for my own consumption until I’m ready to release an idea into the world. And I can sing and dance around my apartment to my heart’s desire without (rightfully) getting on someone’s damn nerves. 

I have a saying that there’s some people who are content with bodies in the room being enough for them - they just like having someone’s presence there - even if they aren’t meaningfully or intimately connected to the people around them. Ironically, loneliness is the result of not being fully seen, heard, supported or validated for who you are. Being around tons of people doesn’t mean you feel connected or never feel loneliness, especially if operating from a “bodies in a room are enough” mentality about togetherness, which so many people do. Solitude made me more thoughtful about how I spend my time with the folks I care about. 

Investing in mental health: *SUNG TO RIHANNA’S ‘WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN SOUNDTRACK’* “THEeeRAPPYYYY CAN CHANGE YOUR LI-I-IFEEEE, CHANGE YOUR LI-I-IFE, LI-I-IFE, LI-I-IFE, LI-I-IFE, WHERE HAVE YOU  BEEN ALL MY LI-I-I-I-I-IFE!!?”

I started my therapy journey in 2013 and have seen a variety of practitioners and styles over the past 8 years. Therapy has helped me identify limiting beliefs, cognitive distortions, unhealthy patterns, improved my communication and relationship skills, given me more resilience with adversity, provided clarity of my sense of worth, and a gave me a foundation for healthily processing my personal experiences. 

Therapy isn’t a silver bullet, and our mental health system is crusty and needs so much evolution to be fully inclusive and accessible. But if you’re able to make the financial investment, have the privilege of incredible mental health benefits, or just want to at least read up on psychology and personal development, I can’t recommend the process of a therapeutic journey enough. If you want to start with just reading resources, this book for panic and anxiety, this book for self-awareness of patterns, this quiz for uncovering limiting beliefs, this resource for relationships, and this book to process and understand confusing childhoods, are incredible places to start. 

Creating my own definitions of success: One of my core values is liberation which by definition is a release from oppression and achieving real freedom. Success to me by this definition at 35 means freedom of time, freedom of choice, freedom to say no, freedom to say yes without concession, freedom to prioritize what’s important and leave the rest behind, freedom of who I spend my time with and how, and freedom to choose intentional growth and impact over gross, destructive, and wild profits. I’ve been able to achieve each one of these definitions of what I deem success.

Building my professional development and equity business, The New Quo, which uses behavioral-science based narrative techniques to help people build more equitable habits, goals, and relationships, is outside of many conventions, which means how I define success isn’t just by revenue. I also define success by quality of projects, aligned values, impact and accountability in process, and freedom of my time. I was grateful to reach a stage this year where I’ve worked the least I’ve had to work in years and have made the most income I’ve made at any point in my life. No, my goal isn’t infinite growth, but it is living a values-practiced life that allows more creativity, more meaningful connection and learning with folks I care about, and more liberation of myself and so many others. 

Rest and slowing down: All of the above practices have taken years and years of time to pay off. They are not quick fixes, or over night sensational methods to massive conventional success. But the hard and sometimes unpleasant work of self-discovery and growth is slow, quiet, and incremental. I’ve started a practice every New Year where I review the highs and lows of the year in all areas of my life, from love and relationships to emotional well being, health, and career. This practice has allowed me to witness the subtle and fundamental shifts in attitude and mindset over the years that has been so valuable to experience and positively impacted everything I do. 

I’ve created more rest and stillness in my life, giving me more time for self-reflection and study. Being constantly and chronically “productive,” and viewing rest or slow movement in various areas of life as failure, is the fast track to a very disconnected and unsatisfied existence. 

Turning 35 means that I have graced this planet for a short 3 ½ decades and I have so much more to learn and grow if I have the honor of seeing another year. I’m excited to see how self-connection and time allows me to live up to a fuller potential I can only imagine, and also testing how long I can keep up doing drop splits at parties cause imma do it til I can’t anymore.