1. If you have to choose between three pairs of shoes of okay quality, and one pair of higher quality, pick the latter. There are few things worse than cheap shoes that fit badly.
2. You don’t need anyone’s permission to do or not do anything. You don’t need other people’s experiences to validate your own.
3. Self care is hard. It is not always self-indulgence. It is not always splurging on spa treats. Self-care is often about trading immediate gratification for future well-being. It’s investing your money. It’s putting your phone down (is there anything more ephemeral than the latest Twitter scandal?). It’s getting your 10,000 steps per day and drinking water and sleeping well.
4. “Give people the same energy they give you.” Nope. “Treat others as you’d like them to treat you.” Yup.
5. Sunscreen is underrated, especially in Nigeria.
6. Sometimes, the most loving thing you can do for the people you love, is let them make grave mistakes.
7. Beware groupthink even when the motives seem sincere.
8. Anti-fragility is a concept worth exploring, especially when it comes to raising children or framing one’s attitudes. Being a snowflake (tender, fragile, delicate, easily offended, sore) puts too much power in the hands of the external world (society).
9. I once read somewhere that happiness = reality/expectations. If your reality vastly exceeds your expectations, you’re happy. If your expectations exceed reality, you’re not happy. It implies that to find the most happiness, we should either seek to increase our realities, or lower our expectations. It doesn’t work in many situations, but it does in some.
10. That said, I believe in seeking peace first. Happiness is harder to pin down in the present. It’s best recognized when we look in the rearview mirror of our lives. i.e. Wow, 1989 was one of my happiest years.
11. We don’t fully understand anyone. Not their motivations and not their problems. So instead of acting on assumptions we make, it’s best to ask. (That’s if you’re really interested. Sometimes, we’re not. And that’s okay too.)
12. It’s great to read a lot. It’s better to have all that reading translate into practical actions. You’d expect that all that new insight would somehow influence how we act and treat each other. But it’s not automatic. Everything requires intentionality these days.
13. Mercy is no longer mercy if it is deserved. Undeserved mercy is tautology.
14. Nigerian parents get a lot of flak, these days. It’s sensible to remember that there’s a difference between “Nigerian Parents” as an institution, and your specific Nigerian parent who thought nothing of sacrificing new clothes so you could go to a decent school.
15. “Envision your best self, and then show up as her/him”. This advice is meant to be taken literally. Sit down and ask yourself, “If I was the kind of friend I wanted to be, what would I do?” You might decide, “I’d call one friend for 15 minutes every week.” So schedule that task in your phone calendar and just call one friend every week. It’s actually that simple.
16. Lots of people like to make it cool to not care about anything. It’s okay to be counter-culture and actually care.

*This post was inspired by ruminating on turning 31. Happy birthday to me. Can’t believe it was just a few years ago, I wrote about turning 23.*