Turning 31: How I let go of the emotional weight in my life

Ever since the beginning of the year, my mindset has completely shifted. For the first time in my adult life, I’m not carrying the emotional burden of everything I do. I no longer over-analyse, I don’t over-anticipate, and I’ve stopped ruminating about the most menial tasks. 

I’ve stopped second-guessing, I’ve started to enjoy books, media, art, writing – without worrying about whether I’m wasting my life away doing these things. 

As someone who is known for being productive and constantly optimising for the future, it’s been a constant struggle for me to chill out. It was almost impossible for me to do anything without consciously (or subconsciously) thinking about how it could contribute to my future growth somehow. Until this year, I didn’t realise how much having this default mindset exhausted me and took away energy from things that were supposed to be relaxing.

A lot of external factors have helped me on the journey towards “not caring”; I’m now in my 30s, I have an established routine that I’ve been working on for the past couple of years, I’m focused on cultivating my current relationships, and most importantly, I switched to timed tasks in my Google Cal (explained here, along with other great habits which have helped me this year), 

But emotionally, things are different. 

I don’t need to change who I am, it will happen naturally as I move through life

Instead of trying to control how I grow, I’ve accepted that the best growth will happen naturally. I’ve surrendered control, accepting that I’ll build more knowledge, learn more resilience, and build skills purely from existing. 

While my 20s were filled with intense growth, a lot of my worst (and stunted) moments happened because I was trying to change or deny who I was. I was constantly micromanaging my own growth, hoping I’d push myself into a path that (in hindsight) wasn’t anything I wanted.

Here’s an example: During COVID and my post-business failure, I decided that I didn’t want to be a workaholic anymore (ha!). The culture of work was shifting to anti-hustle, it was basically frowned upon to care about liking your job. I had decided it was my priority to now focus on just getting any job that had a paycheck, and it didn’t matter if I didn’t like it – because enjoying work was lame right?

Instead of accepting that part of me (aka the part that knows work fulfills me, as sad as that sounds), I decided it was better to push myself into a mindset that my peers had, where they were able to compartmentalise their grief about their job within 9-5, and spend the money they earned enjoying the spoils of life. What I learnt during this period was that my work has such an impact on my emotional well-being and I can’t change that – that’s just who I am. And as much as there is criticism about productivity, work, and being a slave to that culture, I can’t help but be interested in and motivated by it, I just really like it. 

Growth will happen, whether I like it or not. Instead of trying to stress myself out about whether I’m making the right choice, I now allow myself to grow naturally. I now approach my personal growth like I do my wardrobe – I have staple pieces, but slowly over the months and years, I add pieces that I come across that make me feel good, fit me well, or that I’m drawn to. I trust the pieces that I pick will match the rest of my wardrobe and my lifestyle – and if it doesn’t, I’ll learn to avoid those types of clothes in the future.

Instead of trying to put restrictions – i.e. limit my wardrobe to 32 pieces (like a minimalist capsule wardrobe) or overconsuming to create a false identity (following trends like clean girl, tomato girl, blueberry nails girl??), I’m letting myself (and my wardrobe) be eclectic, and be an embodiment of my lifestyle and where it takes me. 

Suffering is not a victory

In the last few years, I’ve accepted that I’m not a better artist or better person by allowing myself to suffer during the process.

I think I had adopted the ‘suffering is needed to succeed’ mindset because of the following reasons – I’m a creative person, and being creative is often littered with anxiety, stress and insecurity. People use the term ‘tortured artist’ as a badge of honour. Society also favours the underdog, and scoffs at someone for achieving something so easily (tall poppy syndrome anyone?).

And because of this, I subconsciously developed this mindset: that everything I did wasn’t worthy unless I had suffered or stressed in some way to get there. If something came too easily, I questioned whether I tried hard enough, and if I could have achieved a better result if I drained all my energy into the task. 

This didn’t apply to just art, or my job – it was everything in my life. Even menial tasks needed to have 100% energy and effort in – if I wasn’t agonising over the perfect outcome, then it meant I didn’t do it to the best of my ability. As you can imagine, it was incredibly exhausting living this life – so I eventually accepted that it's okay to enjoy things and things can be easy. 

The time spent worrying about the thing, you could be doing the thing!

There’s a Taylor Swift quote I think about a lot. She’s being interviewed and she talks about her creative process:

“I definitely feel more free to create now, and I’m making more albums at a more rapid pace than I ever did before, because I think the more art you create, hopefully the less pressure you put on yourself. If you stay ready you don’t have to get ready, if you keep making stuff you just keep making stuff and hopefully you get better at it. It doesn’t have to be so, you don’t have to belabour it and polish the doorknob so long you forget to open the door.”

“Polishing the doorknob so long you forget to open the door” was the #1 reason why I struggled with creating ANYTHING. I’d always worry about needing to be prepared – having everything set mentally, emotionally, physically. I spent so much time planning and worrying about the future, that I never did the thing! I’d agonise so much over the consequences of my next steps, I would feel overwhelmed and debilitated – and end up doom scrolling instead.

So now, I don’t think far ahead, I just do the thing if I want to do it. Rather than assessing whether I should spend the time doing Task 1 over Task 2, the time I spent agonising over what’s better, I could’ve done both of the tasks! I’ve actively stopped thinking about outcomes – 90% of the consequences I have in my mind are completely made up, and it took me years to realise that. My anxiety likes to catastrophise and it wasn’t helpful at all.

I embrace my different ‘modes’

My three modes of living are: Gremlin mode, Standard mode, and Advanced Deb mode. Based on how I feel, I do everything at the standard of that mode. Let me explain:

Gremlin mode (35% of my life): This is when I’m feeling crusty, unmotivated, and tired. I allow myself to rot as much as I want, and I’m watching TikTok and YouTube for hours on end. I prioritise getting 9-5 work done, but then nap as soon as I get home. I rely on external factors to motivate me (like people inviting me out to social events), but my internal willpower is gone and I barely have the energy to do anything on my own. My apartment is messy and chaotic but I just leave it like that until the end of the week (This is my current status, I’m surprised I’m even writing this article right now).

Standard mode (55% of my life): This is my most normal status, where I spend most of my day doing everything at 80%. I tidy after myself, I do my skincare routine, I read, I write, I watch TV, I get all my tasks and admin done and feel very balanced.

Advanced Deb mode (10% of my life): This happens very rarely, and this is when I’m at my optimal and ideal self. This means my home is clean, my tasks are all completed, and I’m starting to add new habits to my routine. I’m also being creative, I’m drawing, designing outside of work and I feel like I have time to myself.

Depending on how I feel, I switch between these different modes, and the standard of living adjusts to that mode. I’ve loved adopting this mindset about “modes” because it takes the pressure off to be ‘perfect’ all the time, and just because I’m in ‘Gremlin mode’ today, it doesn’t mean that I won’t be in ‘Advanced Deb mode’ next week. I used to think that if I suddenly fell into Gremlin mode, I would be like that forever (I know, so dramatic) – but being able to identify this is a small phase that I’m going through allows me to accept where I am now, instead of forcing myself to change myself when I’m not in the mental state to do so. 

Last words…

When I reflect on the mental transformation I’ve achieved this year, I can barely believe how chill I’ve been (honestly, I’m cautiously optimistic this will be how I feel for a while). Getting to where I am has been a long journey – 31 years of trial and error, fucking things up, chaos, fun, and spontaneity. What I’ve learnt is no matter what ‘mode’ you're in, even if you’re angry, sad, depressed, it doesn’t mean there can’t be moments of hope, fun and iconic memories that can be made at our worst times. 

Remember… nothing is a waste, nothing matters, and things happen at the time when they need to.