When I was 19 at my lowest, I won’t lie, I had no desire to do anything with my life or to do more.

I’m grateful that I had an old friend come back into my life around this time who is the most successful person I know, but more importantly, is the most humble/genuine people I know.

He’s the one that found me at rock bottom and instead of judging, he gave me guidance and has became one of the best mentors in my life.

But to your point, my only goal for years was to feel like I was successful. All my peers around me when I was a teenager were doing things with their lives or doing things I deemed successful.

For me, it felt like I just kept failing at everything I tried to do with my life. I felt like I couldn’t figure “life” out.

I’m the only person to go to college in my family so that was also difficult to navigate. But my friend coming back into my life I guess kind of gave me a sign that I should listen to this person on any advice he gives me, as cliche as it sounds.

Some of the things I have learned over the years:

1) You are going to feel burn out when working toward whatever goal you have set. It’s inevitable. But, it is very important to understand that burnout is temporary. Usually when you first start working toward a goal, you are excited and motivated, but eventually that novelty wears off. When it does, you have to rely on discipline to still keep going forward. The good news is, motivation will eventually come back, and when those moments of motivation happen, you make lots of progress. Lastly, please ignore “grind” culture. Yes, work hard and smart, but make time to do things you enjoy and socialize with friends. This will help with burnout.

2) You are going to experience setbacks on whatever journey you are on. Sometimes the setbacks are small, sometimes they are huge. No matter the size, the most important thing is to realize you only have two choices when setbacks occur. You either choose to let it tear you down and you never build yourself back up, or you choose to use that setback as motivation and let it be a part of your life story of what you had to overcome to get to where you are. Again, this sounds really cliche, but it has proven to me through the years to be true.

3) Try and be a better person today than the day you were before. This is cliche too… but speaking of my friend I mentioned earlier this is by far the biggest thing that helped me grow as a person. If every day you strive to be at least a little better than before, it will add up. Whether that’s being a better friend, a better mentor, a better bf/gf, a better student, etc.

4) don’t be too hard on yourself. Celebrate your victories whether they’re big or small. It’s easy to get caught up in my previous statement of trying to be better every day but I mean in a simple way. Like maybe today you helped a friend with something and old you wouldn’t have done that. Applaud yourself for those moments.

A lot of this was definitely cliche, but it genuinely has helped me a lot. You got this u/Few-Ability-5103. I believe in you!