2020, the year that started off with a “Yeah” is now ending with a “Meh”. While the past year took a lot away from us (farewell, social life) it also gave us a lot. We learned how to adapt to a whole new COVID-19 ridden world. A world with boundaries and without crowds. A conversation on Malini’s Girl Tribe brought to light the multitude of lessons 2020 taught us and they are insightful, beautiful and very relatable.
20 Life Lessons We Learnt From 2020:
1.Health is Really Wealth
Haldi doodh and Vitamin C capsules were essentials this past year. As were Yoga classes, Zoom workouts and daily walks. We all wanted to be healthy and boost our immunity.
2. Learn To Love Yourself
2020 was the year of self-love. Loving ourselves despite changes in our mental health, weight, income, social life, work environment and your surroundings was key to surviving 2020.
3. The Art Of Sanitising
Sanitizers became and always will be our best friend.
4. Admire The Little Things
It could be the little flower outside your window, parrots sitting on the electrical wires or even the daily memes on your group-chat, 2020 was the year to admire these little things. They made us happy and feel fuzzy and we loved it!
5. Count Your Blessings
We cannot stress this enough. Having a house, 3 meals a day and a loving family are giant blessings we should be thankful for every day. COVID-19 has been hard on us, but even harder on those who have less than us. Counting our blessings and trying to help others in any way we can is what 2020 was and 2021 will be all about.
6. Save Money
Thanks to negligible travelling costs, a chunk of our money got saved. Additionally, some of us even moved back home, saving another chunk of rent. 2020 was the year to save, invest and grow our wealth, and 10 years down the line, we will reap the benefits.
7. Don’t Take Anything For Granted
Don’t do it. Just don’t.
8. Learn To Have Patience
The Fairy Godmother from Cinderella said, “Even miracles take a little time”. 2020 has taught us just that and we’ve learnt the art (after a long time and lots of trial-and-errors) of being patient and not getting frustrated.
9. Put Your Mental Health First
Physically, the pandemic was harming us, and mentally, it was ruining us. 2020 was the year we all learnt how important it is to be mentally healthy. Whether it was at home or work, everyone started putting their mental health first. Many companies even allowed their employees to take a day off if they “just weren’t feeling it”… and that is real progress.
10. Your House Can Be Your Oyster
We all turned our homes into makeshift gyms, Yoga rooms, art studios, gourmet kitchens and more. Our homes adapted to our needs and it was amazing.
11. Don’t Eat When You Are Bored
Yes, eating 23 hours a day may not have been ideal and we (and your doctors) hope that phase ended a while back.
12. Meditation Is Powerful
2020 was the year of valuing our mental health and anything that helped it. Meditation played a big role in calming us down and helping us deal with all the stress, anxiety and depression COVID-19 brought along.
13. OTT Platforms Are A God-Send
If you don’t have subscriptions to at least five OTT platforms, are you even normal?
14. Multitasking Is Important
I think we all nailed sleeping and attending a meeting simultaneously. It is truly a life-skill.
15. Appreciate Your House-help
Many of us were unable to employ our house-help due to COVID-19 and had to do chores that were always done for us (yes, this is a first-world problem, we know). It made us appreciate them so much more because doing housework is far from easy.
16. Adversity Creates Opportunities
It was inspirational to see so many people start new businesses, home bakeries and side-hustles, regardless of whether they had jobs or not.
17. Live Everyday To The Fullest
Although this was tricky since we couldn’t really leave our homes, we still managed to do it. Whether it was staying up all night after a tough day at work to binge Pataal Lok, downloading dating apps and bravely swiping right (multiple times) or even taking an off-day to pamper ourselves with clay masks and scrubs, we learnt to take advantage of each and every second.
18. How To Cough Without Freaking People Out
This is an art and a science, which many are still to learn. Coughing in public is the worst offence and we need to learn how to be subtle about it.
19. Tell Your Parents You Love Them Often
Do it. Do it after you read this. Trust us, it’s priceless.
20. Always Expect The Unexpected
This is 2020 summed up in one sentence. COVID-19, locust swarms, earthquakes, forest fires, cyclones and much more hit us one after the other, yet we survived and stood tall. We don’t know what 2021 holds for us, and we’re not even going to bother predicting it.
We’re surely going to be carrying these lessons into 2021. 2020 has been a weird year, but it’s been an eye-opening one none the less. What have you learned this year? Share it with us in the comments below.
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