Today is my 25th birthday… In this moment, I want to write down all my reflections from 25 years of life.
The Most Important Things I Wish I Knew When I Was Younger
- Health is the most important foundation for anything we want to do. From the beginning of my life since I started formal education, the most important things in my mind were just learning, learning, and learning. I didn’t care about my health. When I got sick and my peers told me or gave me advice to take care of my health, I countered them with what I thought was the smartest argument—you pick what? Smart but sick or dumb but healthy. I thought this was my best argument. But after years of experience with illness, I realized I can’t work when I’m sick, I can’t make money when I’m sick. Those experiences made me rethink: are my thoughts right, or do I have to reevaluate? I chose to reevaluate. I WAS WRONG and I MUST change my perception. I have to prioritize my HEALTH. That’s the first thing besides my spiritual aspect that I must prioritize.
- Our spiritual aspect is the very, very important aspect to make sure we have strong and deep roots. Yep. Like my statement above, besides health, my spiritual aspect is one of the most important. First, I have to disclaimer: my spiritual aspect will be very influenced by my faith in Jesus Christ as my Lord—Christian. So if you want to skip this section, it’s okay. From all my experiences with my spiritual aspect, this is the most valuable aspect that I’ve found very helpful when I’m struggling, desperate, hopeless, stuck, etc. I have tried many things, read tens of self-improvement books, watched motivational videos, etc., and all of those had very little impact on my life. So what is the most impactful aspect—spirituality. What you believe, how strong your faith is, and how strong your need for Jesus is. That’s very important. I’ve tried so hard to be strong by myself, but I failed. So in my new age, I changed my perspective: rather than believing only in myself, I want to believe first in The One Who Created me—My Lord Jesus.
- Relationship. How deep your relationship is matters more than how big your network is. I can’t write a lot about this section. But I am grateful that early in my life, I learned that our relationships with other people are very important when we are struggling. Who we know, who knows us, who believes in us. It’s not important if you know 100 important people but none of them believe in you. That’s very bad. We have to evaluate ourselves. Don’t be selfish.
- EQ > IQ. Yeah, this insight may be the most insightful, the most impactful—I don’t know how to express this. But this is very important. I have met some of the smartest people, but they lack emotional intelligence, they don’t have people skills, they don’t have soft skills. THIS IS VERY SAD. In every aspect of life, we work with people, we learn with people, we meet with people. Everything we do—the majority of things we do—we do with people. Not dead things. WE MUST HAVE SOFT SKILLS, PEOPLE SKILLS, OR GOOD OR GREAT EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE. Invest in this. Read a book. Attend a course. Join a conference. Join a community. Do anything to make sure this aspect improves in yourself.
- Learning. I don’t write a lot in this section. To read my perspective about learning, you can visit my previous essay What Learning Really Is?
These are just my reflections. I can be different from you and it’s okay. Each of us has unique experiences that make us unique. Maybe I can be wrong, but this may be the journey of my life. Maybe in the future I’ll change, and it’s fine—we are human, we have to change to stay relevant, but we also have to make sure that our values keep us on track. Last but not least: Stay learning, from anyone, anywhere, anything. Because it can make us relevant.
— Penu Djira (Wadumeddi, December 21st, 2025)
