The growing pains of life can ache so badly one day that they force you to bed rest, shutting out the world around you.

Each phase of life brings about these growing pains in the form of knowledge, wisdom, and hopefully, growth.

The growing pains of my early 20s have been especially painful, but I know they’ll contribute to the refinement of who I am, what I believe, and how I choose to live my life.

Whether these growing pains are but a faded memory for you, having long ago experienced and overcome them or you’re going through the same growing pains right now, take a moment to reflect on my lessons learned and what they mean for you.

#1 Suffering Imagined Problems Will Make You Miserable

You have the power to think about whatever you want to.

Thoughts may be hard to control, but they’re easy to complicate.

Letting your mind suffer imagined problems leaves you at a mental disadvantage.

Willingly letting your mind suffer imagined problems is a practice of the weak.

It doesn’t give you more control over your life. It doesn’t make you more prepared. It doesn’t bring you comfort in the face of the unknown.

It just makes you suffer.

#2 Trying to Control Your Life Is A Task of the Feeble

We are control-hungry humans.

Any sliver of perceived control we can have over our life we frantically grasp for.

And it’s all rooted in fear.

Fear of the unknown. Fear of failure. Fear of inadequacy.

You’ll bring yourself to a point of exhaustion trying to control things.

You think it’ll give you peace. You think it’ll bring you comfort. But really, it just brings artificial order in a world of disorder.

#3 You’re Not Perfect, so Stop Expecting Other People to Be

You know you’re not perfect, so why do you expect others to be?

But I don’t, I know others have flaws, just like I do!

If you truly believed others weren’t perfect, then why do other people’s actions impact your emotions?

Why does your spouse frustrate you?

Why does your boss annoy you?

Why do your kids get on your nerves?

All of these feelings say more about you than it does the person you associate them with.

Holding other people to standards is unreasonable. Especially if your standards are too high. Or you never communicate your standards. Or you use those standards to compare them to someone else.

More than killing relationships, inexplicitly expecting the perfection of others kills your ability to be a healthy friend, co-worker, employee, lover, and parent.

#4 Expectations Held is A Game Never Won

The root of dissatisfaction in life isn’t lack of money.

It’s not a lack of happiness.

Not even a lack of basic needs being met.

The root of dissatisfaction in life is the expectations you have.

Expectations are like telling someone they owe you money. Except you’ve never even talked to this person a day in your life.

No one owes you anything.

Not the boyfriend who cheated on you.

Not the job that fired you.

Not the parent who left you.

Not the health that failed you.

Expectations breed entitlement. And no one is entitled to anything.

Real Talk

Life is always teaching you lessons.

It’s up to you whether or not you want to learn and internalize them.

It’s not fun, it’s not easy.

If you come face to face with the ugliest sides of yourself, if you experience growing pains, consider yourself lucky.

Most people are zombies. Walking around not feeling, noticing, or understanding anything.

While it may be hard, count yourself lucky to not be among the walking dead.

I’m not sure about most things in life. Who knows, I could wake up tomorrow and be a completely different person.

What I am sure of is that these growing pains are not reserved strictly for almost-23-year-olds.

Take your growing pains in stride. Take them and make them into just plain old growing.

Growing into a better human.