Becoming

When I was a little girl I used to look in the mirror and try to see what I would be like when I was older. It's funny to compare where I thought I would be to where I am now. There is only one thing that I predicted on that day that actually came true: I went to college. To say I am a planner is an understatement. I live to write lists and plan things out, that is who I am. I had a pretty good plan for my life. I was going to become a dental hygienist, I was going to make it into BYU and get straight A's (HAHA), and I was going to go on dates like crazy. I learned that life doesn't go according to plan, and this year was an eye opener for me. This year was one of those crazy life changing years for me. The ones where it's super uncomfortable and the whole time you are wondering if you are even making a single right choice. This past year has taught me a lot, and I am grateful for it.

1) SOME DOORS WILL CLOSE, BUT THAT JUST MEANS THAT THERE IS A GREATER ONE DOWN THE ROAD

One of these uncomfortable changes was my major, I had jumped around to several different majors in my first two years of college and was just unable to find my "nitch". Nothing felt right and no matter how much studying I did, I was just not doing well. I had flirted with the idea of becoming a graphic designer and living the cool life (seriously, graphic designers are pretty rad). I went into the advisement office, sat down and told my adviser that I knew graphic design was the thing for me. Unfortunately, she didn't think it would be the smartest route for me to take (ugh), and I left that office feeling like a part of me had been ripped out and fed to the dogs. Seriously, it was no good. I called my mom in tears, I had KNOWN that this is what I needed to be, this is what I WANTED to do. I had a job interview right after this, and was really nervous that I would be told "no" once again. I started to get down on myself and my mom swooped in and gave me the pump up talk of the century. I went to my job interview where I was informed of a major that I had never heard of before--landscape management. (What the what?!) There was something that went off inside of me, something that drove me to register for my landscape design class, a little fire that kept on burning. I fell in love with everything I was learning, it made sense, things finally clicked. I had found my nitch, and I found it right after I had been rejected from something that I had thought was going to be my "jam". This was a heart wrenching experience at first, but has produced some of the greatest blessings in my life.


2)  MY GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS HAVE COME FROM MY GREATEST FAILURES

I am a perfectionist through and through. I am competitive (I'm really good at keeping that on the down low, but now you all know...). I work hard to get where I am at, I try and give everything 110% and it kills me to see myself fail at something. I have had my fair share of failures this semester and have experienced those moments where I feel as though the world has come crashing down. I have learned that I don't have to do everything alone, thanks to Christ's atonement, and that my failures can be made into learning experiences that give me the chance to grow and become better. Rad, right?! I have found that if I keep trying and working at giving things my best, I can always look back and say that I tried, and in some cases, trying is all that I needed to do. I think that learning to take your failures and make them into something that you can learn from is powerful and something I will continue to work on for the rest of my life.

3) SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO HAVE A CHECK ON YOUR PRIORITIES

Fun fact: I am NOT a morning person. I hate getting out of bed and would stay in bed for a good 45 minutes until I gave myself a pump up talk to get out of the covers. This semester I set a goal to be more productive with my time. I had a professor give a little lecture on time at the beginning of the semester as my nose was in my phone, and I decided that I needed to make some changes in my life. Things were controlling my time, and I needed to rearrange my priorities. I read a book called "The Perfect Day Formula", and was on a roll. I made rules for myself, and I stuck to them. My social life did suffer a little, so I wouldn't suggest this to all college students, but I made it work. I gave myself 5 rules:

• I would get up every morning at 5:00 am and would be in bed by 9:00 each night, no excuses. If I got to bed a little late I would still wake up at 5:00. 
• I would get limit social media to only Instagram, my Snapchat was deleted, and Facebook was limited to the weekends. 
• I would exercise every morning, FIRST THING. *This one was a struggle for me, because I justify working out later in the day, and then just eventually never do it, haha oops...
• Homework would be put away every night at 8:00 (this one was a struggle, but it forced me to focus on my homework and make it my priority.
• I would spend 30 minutes everyday writing in my journal, reading scriptures, and/or reading good things in general.

Like I said, these rules KILLED my social life, but my grades have never been better, and considering I was working 20 hours a week and trying to juggle classes and everything else, this helped a lot. I learned a lot about time and how to spend it, and what I was most willing to spend my time on. In those moments where I didn't have homework or work, I found myself wanting to be around the people that I loved. I looked at my phone a lot less and stopped watching TV *gasp*, (except for HGTV once every other week... but that is a must). I did allot time to spend time with people, I wasn't a complete hermit. I was blessed with the opportunity to play basketball--we even made it to the championship game--with some of the greatest girls. I played volleyball every Thursday night with some stellar people. So no worries there ;), but again, my time was spent on more important things. It was spent on the things that mattered the most. 

4) MONEY DOESN'T GROW ON TREES

This one was a hard one for me (and is still hard to grasp). You think I would have it down after being in college for 3 years, but I guess that sometimes you just need a wake up call to get some stuff to work out. I was sitting in accounting, looking at Old Navy (because my closet is basically 95% Old Navy) and had about 10 items in my cart adding up to a number that made me cringe inside a little bit. It finally hit me, I needed to make a budget and stick to it. WHAT IN THE WORLD?! I have always been a penny pincher and have found it hard to buy things, but with "one click shopping" I had started to tap away at my bank account. I made a change, and found that it is possible to live off a modest budget and that the clothes in my closet look just fine. It was a humbling experience, but it has taught me a lot about being more aware of the choices I make, because they always come with consequences. It's never fun to look at an empty checking account.

5) REPENTANCE IS ACTUALLY BEAUTIFUL

I cannot stress this one enough!! Seriously, I have learned so much about Christ's atonement in the past year, and I am sure that if you have a conversation longer than 30 minutes with me, this will come up. I decided this was going to be something I was going to study because I didn't understand it as much as I would have liked to and I fell in love with this beautiful gift that has been given to us. I remember a young women's leader telling us that repentance is daily. I looked around the room, what in the world were these people doing to need to repent every single day?! Now, I can say I am a bit older, and maybe a centimeter wiser (if you could measure the amount of wisdom gained). Repentance isn't about feeling terrible or awful, although those are the things that sometimes bring us to repentance. Repentance is about change, it's about turning back to your Father in Heaven, it's about working to become. It really is a beautiful thing, and repentance is something we can do daily. We mess up, we are human, and Heavenly Father understands that. It's about our willingness to change and become the best we can be. Repentance helps us refocus our blurred vision on what is important in life and start moving toward it once again. I could go on forever, but just know that I am grateful for my Savior and his role in my life. I have a testimony of Christ's atonement and the power that it has to help us BECOME!

6) NATURE IS GOD'S GIFT TO ME

This might be something that is a little self-centered. I know that nature wasn't made just for me, but it is one of my greatest blessings in life. I grew up working in the garden with my family, mowing our lawn and the lawns in the neighborhood, helping pick black berries for pie and jam, and doing a ton of service projects involving working outdoors. I love being outside and I have had some awesome experiences in nature. Hence why my major totally fits me. Sometimes I crave mowing a lawn or planting a garden. I think nature has so much to teach us about life and about the gospel if we just take the time to really ponder on it. We live on such a beautiful earth! Take the time to look around and appreciate it.

7) YOU GET WHAT YOU MEASURE

I am a goal setter. I have a list of goals that sit on my magnet board that I look at every day. I'm not going to say them on here because they are more personal, but they are daily goals that I work to hit everyday. I was taught the lesson, "You get what you measure" in accounting (this is the management part of landscape management, just in case you were confused hehe). I now have a different approach to goals and how I write them. They are things I need to be doing everyday to achieve a bigger goal. I call them my "mini goals". They help me to evaluate where I am at and how well I am doing. This helped me IMMENSELY in school, and in many other aspects. I used to be really overwhelmed when setting goals because they just seemed to big to conquer. I wasn't seeing any changes in my life, I felt stagnant and as if I wasn't moving forward. It was awful. I started measuring how I was doing with my mini goals and it worked!

I promise my life isn't perfect, I still have those moments where I just want to curl up and cry because things are just coming at me too quickly. I still have moments where I look at my life and think, "what in the world am I doing?". But I also have moments filled with joy, and have the opportunity to look to better days ahead, because "this too shall pass". There is no perfect formula for life. But I try my hardest to do my best, and in my book, I think that's just as good. My life is messy, it has ups and it has downs, I eat smoothies for at least 2 of my 3 meals a day, I can barely find my keys in the morning, I got my identity stolen. But I know that they joys that I experience make up for these "unbearable" days. I am grateful for uncomfortable growing pains in life and the lessons that they have taught me. I wouldn't trade them for the world! Life is about becoming.