I am ashamed to admit that it has taken me twenty-one years to realize that I have been caring about all the wrong things. I wish I could get back all the time I spent worrying about the things that don’t matter at all. I used to think that these things determined everything about me. I was very wrong. They don’t matter at all. Here are the things I wish I never cared about:

1. How many friends I had

All I wanted was a big group of friends. I had myself convinced that if I had a lot of friends then I would never feel lonely. I cared so much about the quantity of friends I had and I didn’t care at all about the quality of my friends.

2. How many likes I got on Instagram

I will admit to saying “hey go like my pic on instagram” to my friends. I cared the most about how many likes the pictures of myself got, as if the number of people who mindlessly double tapped on my post actually determined my worth.

3. What my body looks like

I’ve always been relatively thin but I have never had a flat stomach. I hated sitting down because I knew my stomach would stick out. No matter how much I exercised I could never get my body to look exactly the way I wanted it to. It took me a really long time to actually accept that I will never have a “perfect” body and that what my body looks like doesn’t change who I am.

4. Being wrong

I feared being wrong. There were so many times when my teachers would ask a question to the class and no one would raise their hands to answer. I would be sitting there repeating the answer in my head over and over again but I had myself convinced that if no one else was raising their hands then I must be wrong. There is nothing wrong with being wrong sometimes. Raise your hand and answer the damn question.

5. Fitting in

I think this is the one I’m the most mad at myself for caring about. I was so worried about fitting in and being the person who would be liked by everyone that I am just now starting to learn who I really am. I changed depending on whom I was friends with. I molded my likes and dislikes to fit the people around me.

I spent so much time caring about things that don’t matter that I never focused on the things that do matter. There are things in this world that I need to care about, but none of those things are on this list. I’ve finally learned the art of living and letting go.