As another year draws to a close, it's time to reflect on all that has happened and remember all the struggles I've been through that have made me who I am today. As I haven’t committed this to writing in a long time, I’ve decided to look at a selection of major personal milestones over the years.

I struggled with anxiety until I realised my feelings didn't matter.

Despite the concept's simplicity, it took a long time to learn because conventional "wisdom" tells us the exact opposite. From acquaintances to psychologists to self-help gurus, we're indirectly told that our feelings reflect reality. Whether that means thinking dreams have meaning, trusting pure gut feelings without evidence to back them up, or if something makes us feel bad then it is bad, and vice versa.

At the end of the day, problematic anxiety differs from rational fear because the worst possible outcome is feeling terrible or inconvenient. The mind exaggerates these outcomes into seeming more substantial than they are. For example, most people I know and I are not living paycheck to paycheck and have many supports should we fall on difficult times. There's no need for us to fear failing a job interview. It's merely embarrassing, but the embarrassment will pass, and life will go on.

Similarly, some fear having tough conversations with managers or worrying about how others might perceive their behaviour in social situations. These anxieties are extreme enough in some cases that they prevent them from behaving in a manner that's best for them and those they care about or result in them tolerating horrible treatment from others.

These are very relatable scenarios for me as I have been through much of the same that I witness those around me enduring. But, unfortunately, it's easy to either get hung up on not being good enough or fall for the idea that this is how we are and cannot be changed. Or, in my case, when I was much younger, I didn't even begin to think about my anxiety-driven behaviour — I was too busy being anxious.

I recently had a conversation with a friend who tends to be upset about both, and so I explained to her that she's never been this one unchanging person. Between birth and now, she has grown and learnt so much — even recently, she came to a grand realisation that helped her shift her worldview towards something healthier for herself. She has a lot to be proud of achieving in her life, so whatever she feels holds her back today will often be things she can overcome in the future.

I remember how, mainly due to my experiences growing up, I surrounded myself with people who weren't as virtuous as they made themselves out to be. So I learnt this habit of fearing interacting with others because I never knew when someone would try to guilt me into something I wasn't comfortable with or ridicule me for wanting differently. But, unfortunately, it took a long time for me to realise I had this constant fear looming over my shoulder of everything I do being judged pettily in the first place.

Then it took time to realise that these feelings of rejection, humiliation, and disappointment only came from within myself. So regardless of what petty things another person might have said, I can disregard my initial fearful reactions because they don't benefit me or anyone around me. It took a lot of conscious reminders to myself, but it has ultimately been worth it.

I wasn't good at saving money until I decided on measurable personal goals.

This actually goes beyond money — it works exceptionally well to make all goals measurable. So rather than "I want to lose weight," deciding on a goal weight and giving it a deadline. Likewise, "save money" is vague but having an idea of how much I need to save and when I want to achieve it isn't. "Write a book" isn't as helpful as "write a book explaining introductory economic concepts" and then breaking that down further into short-term goals. Similarly, "get a better job" doesn't mean much if I don't define what a better job looks like.

Likewise, when it comes to writing, I have sorted my ramblings into various folders and then made a table in Notion which lists all of them. The table includes the name, the type of writing (e.g. creative, critical analysis, self-reflective, etc.), and some tags to help make the topic more specific (e.g. economics, politics, philosophy). Then finally, if it's something that might end up on one of my sites, whether it's published and what its publish date was/will be.

These examples tie into having measurable goals by having information laid out, giving me an overview of what I have now and what I know I want to work on. I need to know these two things to help me determine what might be missing and how I should prioritise.

When it comes to money, this system lends itself to structured budgeting. Many apps will assist with this, including ones that can connect directly to bank accounts. However, I don't want an app to have access to these things, so instead, I use a simple spreadsheet where I enter numbers manually. I split the spreadsheet into separate sheets, and everything comes together on the initial sheet with averages and graphs.

One of the most essential details is the column that details how much I can expect to save each month. Then, knowing how much I can save each month, I can set realistic saving goals within a specific timeframe. The timeframe itself is critical because I will have a better chance of sticking to the plan if it spans less than two years. While a five-year plan might be great economically on a nation-state scale, it requires an exceptionally dedicated individual to adhere to it individually. That's not me — I'm much too chaotic, and my interests and attention are likely to drift off onto some other endeavour.

When I decided on morals to live by, everything changed.

Or in other words, it's easy to feel as though everything is pointless when one stands for nothing. For almost 25 years, I dealt with depression to the point that there were many times that I struggled to take care of myself. The problem with such depression is that it's very inwardly thinking — an overt focus on my feelings and lack of direction without a willingness to go through the time and effort to learn and commit to morals beyond the immediately gratifying.

Unsurprisingly given this, early on in my life, I decided to do my best to live without regrets. It was a vague goal that I tried to follow for many years. But I expanded upon that idea in the early 2020s to make it less about temporal emotional states, and it became much more useful. I decided that "no regrets" means:

• Learning and sharing knowledge that can help others better determine how they wish to live their lives.

• Helping to improve the lives of those closest to me through my knowledge, skills, and available resources.

The more I learn, the more I notice how not knowing about our economy, media, and politics work makes people unwittingly follow the status quo. So a big part of my intent in knowledge sharing is protecting them from being manipulated into doing whatever those in power want, given the competitive and predatory nature of our current economic system.

Ultimately, I want to help those around me with my knowledge before I die. The world isn't a good place for the average person, but I want to identify the problems and try to find solutions. Even if those solutions are only sometimes correct or implemented within my lifetime, they may provide the stepping stones for others to get started down the right track.

One of the great things about us humans is that we collaborate exceptionally well. I don't need to come to the table with perfectly planned concepts because discussing thoughts with others is how we come to extraordinary conclusions and unique ideas. We can build off each other's ideas to figure out the synthesis between two concepts.

If my posts and the responses received from friends are anything to go by, I can happily be proud of my achievements. But there is always more to be done, and I want to continue improving in everything I strive to achieve.

I struggled to do the things that I thought I should until I fully accepted that I am defined by my actions.

It's one matter to make this claim, but to live by it is another struggle altogether. What I'm referring to are things that are difficult to do or that culturally are frowned upon, but we know are right. In lining up my behaviour with intentions, over the years, I've come to believe the difference is in how I respond to the consequences of my actions.

But that isn't to say that my intentions aren't significant. On the contrary, when following these guidelines, they are the compass by which my actions are measured. For example, consider my intentions are true north, and my goal is to keep moving in that direction, correcting when I go off course.

It might seem an insignificant accomplishment, but consider how difficult staying true to one's course can be. Don't we all have days where we can't be bothered doing anything? Don't those days sometimes turn into weeks or even months? While not everyone may experience this, I'm sure many do — with an estimated 7.8 billion people on earth, my experience cannot be a singular one.

However, some things that fall under this category are more difficult to achieve than others. For example, the realisation that this Anglo-American culture of "civility" hurts everyone in the long term. While realising this helped me begin shedding these anti-conflict diplomatic traits I had attained over the years, it still takes a lot of effort.

I'm not going to become a good person by avoiding making others feel bad - that would be extremely shallow. But I try to be a good person by helping to ensure the future comfort and safety of others, regardless of how much I have to point out painful truths. Of course, I'm also not implying that I don't feel bad when others do. But at some point, I realised my response to the pain and struggles of others needs to be gathering strength to help them more than being a shoulder to cry on.

Regardless, this realisation has been a crucial part of my growth and ability to be a better friend. By not criticising the actions of others for the sake of not hurting their feelings in the short term, I was setting them up for failure in the long term. I've managed to reconcile this by acknowledging that the anxiety from giving tough advice doesn't outweigh the fact that I'm helping someone. And so, we have come full circle back to anxiety. Time to wrap it up?

In conclusion, I am a perpetual work in progress.

With assistance from those who care about and believe in me, I have grown substantially throughout my life, especially in the last few years. It'll be interesting to come back and read these things I've written during such a turbulent transitory period and see how my attitude shifts. I expect all the things I've learnt most recently to settle in and become more subconscious than active thinking. I'll probably read these posts and see chaos and uncertainty in them that I have yet to pick up on.

Either way, I'll be here, doing my best to live a life without regrets.