It has been a year with 20% of ups and 80% of downs. What a journey that 80% of downs could surprisingly teach me a valuable lessons that maybe I couldn’t experienced it in any other life stages. I would recap, as a reflection, the valuable wisdoms I’ve learned throughout the year.

Hardship is a gift⌗

Starting the year of 2023 with no energy, no purpose, and aimlessly didn’t know what I did. I barely adapted the city that I lived in. For me, Jakarta is not a friendly place to live alone. As I also promised to myself to never complain for any obstacles I faced, which makes the stakes higher.

The best turning point was when I gradually eager want to know myself in a void. I read and research about the way of life from many sources. And turns out, I realized that the hardship is given to us as an enabler to get to know ourselves better by learning from what it offers.

Hardship doesn’t mean something is wrong, but it means something is teaching us, something wants us to learn. Hardship is a gift.

Our body is capable to hack their own⌗

This interesting topic had popped up from my mind because of the depression-like syndrome that I wanted to tackle off. I did a small research about this topic. And the reason is because of unbalanced chemical in our brain. So, I started to hack it.

Starting to rearrange the food I eat, modify the habit, exercising, until radically change the mindset. Small amount of substance in a food we eat could affect our homeostasis. So be mindful to choose the food. Habit also contributes unbalanced chemical. As every person has their own style of habit, it’s our responsibility to arrange the habit that suits us.

Small but consistent⌗

I started my running journey when my friend told me to join running event, Jakarta Half-Marathon. After this event, I really excited to do more. So I do running in a weekly basis. It progressed from 5K to 10K to 17K and more. I started small first, then gradually increased the mileage. I never expected could do 20K weekly running. The key is to do small thing in consistent manner so we don’t feel overwhelmed on a big thing ahead.

There’s so many things I learned actually, but I could only told my 3 lessons above, the rest must be keep for my own.

To sum up, 2023 is one of my transformative year. I’d never know what would 2024 give me, but one thing for sure, Allah knows the best.