We never stop learning and growing. Every day is another opportunity to become a better person. Sound too simple? It is. There are some common qualities we start to value when we reach our mid 20’s. Please understand that no one is perfect, so I doubt anyone can claim to reflect these qualities every day. But it’s good to have something to aim for, isn’t it?
Focus
“When you connect to the silence within you, that is when you can make sense of the disturbance going on around you.” -Stephen Richards
Focus is eye contact; silencing your phone so you can actively listen to your friend; being aware of the signs an activity might be a time-waster in disguise.
Talent
“Everyone has talent. What’s rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.” -Erica Jong
Talent is making it look easy; understanding your strengths and weaknesses so you can use them to your advantage; hustling when you’d rather be playing a video game.
Patience
“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” -A.A. Milne
Patience is doing what it takes; being comfortable with the reality that nothing worth accomplishing will be easy; taking a peaceful walk at the park.
Positivity
“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.” -Rabindranath Tagore
Positivity is a warm presence; complimenting people at every opportunity; mindfully focusing on empowering thoughts and discarding limiting ones.
Experience
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” -Truman Capote
Experience is an every day story full of plot-twists; an evolutionary process that continues until your death; being willing to admit you don’t have it all figured out.
Passion
“It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we’d know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank… without passion, we’d be truly dead.” -Angel
Passion is a feeling so powerful that it is impossible to contain; a chaotic force that can bring joy and suffering, leaving us so emotionally exhausted that we need a breather.
Self-awareness
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” -Socrates
Self-awareness is meditation; being curious about why you make the decisions you do; looking at your excuses without judgment, looking for clues that identify the root causes of them (for example, “I’m too busy” often = “I’m over-committed”).
Trustworthiness
“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
Trustworthiness is adding value to the world; only making promises you intend to keep (and apologizing if you don’t); refusing to participate in bullying, office gossip, or speculation about another person.
Ambition
“Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.” -Salvador Dali
Ambition is having a reason to wake up every morning; being excited by your work, because it adds meaning to your life; knowing that it’s better to aim too high and fall short than it is to aim too low and cheat yourself out of personal growth.
Confidence
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” -Hellen Keller
Confidence is believing in yourself; confronting the mental monsters that make you feel like a hopeless victim; presenting yourself in a way that attracts people to you.
Responsibility
Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future. -John F. Kennedy
Responsibility is being brutally honest with yourself; accepting the consequences of your actions, concentrating on the lessons contained that might help you avoid a similar situation in the future.
Creativity
“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” -Kurt Vonnegut
Creativity is art; believing it is better to innovate than regurgitate; gathering knowledge from a variety of sources, searching for common threads that might reveal a bigger picture.
Are there any qualities you started to appreciate when you hit your mid 20’s? Tell us in the comments.
Featured photo credit: Woman with Umbrella/Darren Johnson via flickr.com
