📸: Alanis
At the end of every “Year in Review” mega-post, I compile a list of all the major Life Lessons I’ve learned that year. A few years ago, I started the tradition of separating this into a separate post from the main 2025 Year In Review post.
In compiling these lessons, I noticed they fell into 3 major categories. I have grouped them accordingly:
- Love & Relationships
- Success & Happiness
- Health & Well-Being
Feel free to skip to the sections most interesting or relevant to you. Or just go through them all if you’re in the mood.
Love & Relationships
“‘Truly I tell you,’ he continued, ‘no prophet is accepted in his hometown'” – Luke 4:24 (NIV) – I’ve been thinking about this a lot, especially this past year, in the context of the alumni panels and talks I’ve had at UCI with undergrads regarding their careers and futures. Sharing what I’ve learned with people who are eager to listen and learn, as well as feeling appreciation and respect for sharing my insights with them, is unparalleled.
But when I compare that to when I try to help similar-aged undergrads who know me more personally, it’s clear that my advice usually falls on deaf ears. It feels like the advice and support I give is discounted and ignored.
Therefore, my lesson is to not take it personally by remembering this quote. People naturally don’t heed the counsel of people they consider to be within their community. And I suppose this is my sign to put more of my efforts towards people who are more welcoming of my help instead of towards groups of people who don’t really want it.
Sometimes, it’s better to trust in the judgment of your teammates, even if you think your solution is more “correct” or optimal – In certain situations where there is a lot of discussion and multiple courses of action to decide on, sometimes people might have strong opinions and are more willing to “die on the hill” for what they think should happen. This past season on my dance team, our leadership had more and more of these discussions where it seemed like people were slowly becoming less collaborative and more argumentative out of habit. I came to the realization that many of us were falling into the pattern of trying to fight for every opinion we had, thinking we needed to argue to get our way. Many of us lost sight of the fact that maintaining trust and our relationships with each other should be prioritized over the need to be “right” in a conflict. And that it’s okay to simply trust our teammates and let go of the attachment to our opinions.
Don’t judge people by your own standards; let them judge themselves by their own standards – This is something I’ve had to learn the hard way as I deal with more and more people in both professional and personal contexts. The easiest example I could give is how I realized I’m internally very harsh towards people in my mind who are unable to organize their life for scheduling purposes (aka people who you need to chase down for a commitment they chose, they never know what their calendar looks like, they don’t communicate until the last minute, or they typically arrive late with plenty of recycled excuses). I’ve had to remind myself that not everyone is on top of their own life priorities, or they handle organization differently (or they lack organizational skills in general). And it’s not for me to judge them harshly, but rather to be more discerning about who I choose to collaborate with moving forward, if I find that they’re difficult to work with.
For my podcast, I’m very intentional that if a certain guest is too high-maintenance, difficult to schedule, or they communicate poorly, I won’t invite them back, no matter how good their insights are or how much rapport we might have. The stress of trying to handle the logistics with a difficult guest is not worth any single episode, and definitely not worth losing my own peace.
Making an effort to reconnect with old friends and deepen current relationships is always a good use of time – Building out my podcast and inviting old friends that I haven’t talked to in years made me realize that putting in a little bit of extra energy to reconnect with people I like and admire has been the best use of my time. Not only do I get to revive those relationships, but I also deepen more active ones through these meaningful conversations that we record.
Why creating my digital products was so much fun, and the elements of creating a flow state:
- Being involved in a very creative process
- Working in subjects I’m passionate about
- Learning new skills and using new tools
- Making fast, visible progress, which is gratifying
- Having a clear plan & strategy for execution so I can keep going quickly
- Having tools & resources that I’ve researched to help me on each step
- Knowing it’s not just “for fun” but has the potential to benefit me financially by helping others with their problems
Success & Happiness
When creating a plan or schedule, build in flexibility so that if/when you need to pivot due to outside circumstances, it’s easier to adapt and will be less stressful – In project management, expecting the unexpected and building in flexibility into any plan is key to being able to adapt effectively and quickly. This also reduces stress. When you’re expecting things to go wrong, you’re ready to adapt when it happens. Less rigidity will keep you sane and less stressed in the long run. I believe this lesson also applies to life in general.
The universe will give you good things & abundance if you allow for generosity in your life – This is something that I get reminded of during celebrations such as my birthday, when generosity is more abundant. I’ve learned throughout the years that when you allow for generosity, or for others to be generous to you, it allows that generosity to flow more freely and frequently in your life. I used to be so closed off to the generosity of others (especially as someone who isn’t a gift-giving/receiving type person in the love languages sense). However, the more I graciously accept the loving intent from others as they give the gifts, I find that abundance tends to flow more into my life.
In addition, while the value of giving to others is apparent, allowing others to give to you is a form of love as you’re allowing them to express their appreciation for you. Refusing a gift from someone is rejecting the expression of love towards you. Reframing the act of accepting generosity from others in this way has had a significant impact on my relationships with others.
Find success and happiness in the process, not the results – A reminder to myself that while it’s great to have goals and to strategically act towards them, it’s vastly more important to enjoy the journey of who you are becoming, the skills you develop, and the memorable experience along the way. The right outcomes will result from focusing on the right things. I relate this to all of my endeavors and commitments. Sometimes it can be hard to ignore when the outcomes you want aren’t coming fast enough. But it’s a reminder that the most important outcome is to have a great journey towards a goal you choose. Because everything we do will be challenging, but we get to choose which challenges we undertake, as long as we enjoy doing them.
The main goal of college is to spend time to intentionally raise your level of self-awareness: learning what you enjoy, what you’re good at, what you’re curious about, and who you are at your core – I’ve had so many fantastic discussions with high schoolers, college students, and recent grads over the years. I’ve tried to understand their worries, give them helpful insights, and dissect the lessons learned from my own journey as well as the journeys of my peers. My OTG podcast is committed to this very concept of learning from others and sharing it. One of the recurring themes is the purpose of college and how to spend your time during your undergrad years effectively to set yourself up for a more successful post-grad career. I believe that any time spent trying to learn more about yourself and “calibrate your compass” is always going to have the best ROI for your efforts in figuring out the rest of your life.
Health & Well-Being
Burnout comes from lack of acknowledgment, and when outcomes don’t meet expectations – I experienced burnout by the end of our previous season on my dance team at the start of summer. After auditing the results of three full years trying to improve the team as best as I could, I discovered that most of those efforts didn’t change much in the team. By the end of the year, we were still having the same problems as 4 years prior. Even worse than that, it seemed like nobody acknowledged or appreciated the role I created on leadership (Internal Relations, a specifically defined role that didn’t exist before) to improve these things. We have so many more processes, traditions, and systems that improve team health, longevity, and well-being through consistent feedback loops with our teammates, intentional leadership development, and continuous improvement. A vast majority of what I implemented was directly because of my professional experience, as well as my experience leading teams in various dance communities for the last 15 years.
By the time we got into the 4th season of my leadership tenure, a vast majority of the team didn’t know the effort we put into the last several eras to make everything run smoothly. They just thought our team was always this good. Whenever interpersonal problems happened, they expected me to handle them because nobody else wanted to. But they also never expressed any appreciation for my putting my own well-being on the line to resolve it. And in almost every instance, I would get backlash from the people involved with causing those issues (via gossip, trash talking, and generally creating an unsafe environment), and a negative reputation for myself by people who listened to those problematic individuals.
It was a hard lesson learned, but since it seemed like the end of this 3-year endeavor did not produce the expected outcomes, I committed to protecting my own peace and energy for my last year on the team. I would not overextend myself beyond what I committed to already. I’m thankful I made this decision at the start of the season because I’m much more at peace this time around. I’m not putting in extra effort that nobody asked for, and nobody cared about, which is very liberating. And this will allow me to focus my energy on activities and groups of people who appreciate my efforts to create safe and productive environments for their organizations.
Too much self-focus creates suffering. Helping others is the best way to get out of your own brain and into a gratitude state – A huge reminder to myself and also why I want to volunteer at my church more, as well as seek any opportunities to help others. I noticed a lot that whenever I’m most unhappy, I’m focused too much on myself. However, when I’m helping someone, listening when a friend needs it, or trying to make a stranger’s day a bit better, it’s impossible to focus on whatever is making me upset.
Thank you 2025 for all the Lessons Learned
Like every year, I’m very appreciative that I’m blessed with another year to go through challenges and learn from them. Ideally, they’ll be new lessons each time and not the same ones I have to relearn. Either way, I hope that some of these are insightful to whoever may be reading this.
Cheers!
Discover more from Marlo Yonocruz
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
