- Hangovers don’t get any better with age
- Small children don’t like to lie in, regardless of what time you keep them up until
- Old friends know you almost as well as you know yourself
- Working 9-5 (or 6 or 7) doesn’t mean you are your most productive self
- I appreciate and look for different qualities in friends as I get older
- If I could bottle confidence and have just a dab at times of challenge, I could have reduced a lot of anxiety over the last 30 years
- Just because someone is good at selling themselves, it doesn’t make them better at doing the job
- Sometimes you have to just put your fears aside and get back on the rollercoaster (literally: Lightwater Valley, 2019)
- Having a supportive mentor and friend in the world of freelance work can be an absolute lifesaver
- You don’t have to know or understand someone’s past decisions in order to love them
- Eating a banana every day isn’t going to make you like them if you didn’t like them in the first place
- The impact of mental health is monumentous, all consuming and like a tornado causing devastation in its wake. Just being there to support someone through it and after it is sometimes all you can offer
- Monumentous isn’t a real word but it should be as sometimes it’s exactly the right work to use
- Children need you less as they get older and become independent but they still need you, just differently
- Pulling out grey hairs doesn’t make them disappear
- Getting sick pay, holiday pay and pension options from your employer are a huge benefit and should be valued accordingly
- Running continues to be hard and is such a psychological head-wrecker
- Some people in life just won’t like you, and nothing you can do will change that, and actually that’s okay
- Listening to murder podcasts whilst running in semi-isolated places, is a good way to scare yourself and distort the number of actual murderers versus dog walkers/cyclists/runners you are passing
- A pandemic bring out a kindness in places you’ve never seen before
- Determination is a trait I admire more and more as I get older
- Kindness is another
- Don’t try to pack your bags directly at the till when being served by an Aldi ninja as you won’t win
- Sometimes people will choose to disappear from your life and you have no control over their choices
- Living on my own taught me a lot about myself and made me realise I could do things I’d never had to do before and that I was braver than I thought
- Smiling at someone whilst walking past them costs nothing and makes you (and probably them) feel instantly better
- Listening is important to two-way friendship
- Cats destroy your furniture
- Networking doesn’t have to be putting yourself into a room of people you don’t know and selling yourself
- Happy clients or customers are your biggest ally
- Feeling attractive is about so much more than what you look like
- Laughing at yourself is sometimes the best way to deal with something
- Giving up caffeine is a feat never again to be repeated
- Being comfortable with silence is a skill all by itself
- There are two types of managers; those that put you down and those that build you up. If you have one of the latter ones, appreciate them
- However senior they become, people are just people – doing their best, juggling their lives, dealing with their own stuff and not really any different to anyone else
- Asking for help is okay
- Sometimes the journey is more important than the destination – it depends on who you are travelling with
- Being scared to try something shouldn’t be enough of a reason not to do it
- Life is beautiful, sometimes challenging but full of goodness, kindness and joy. Not everyone gets the chance to live it to their full potential or for as long as others. For those of us that can, we should appreciate it and the people we are lucky enough to share it with every day
