Have You Done the 10-Year Challenge?

This essay originally appeared in the Monday morning newsletter on 12/9/19.

Last week, I grabbed dinner with two friends from high school who were in town for interviews.

Thanks to group chats and traditions like our annual Christmas gift exchange, I thought I was mostly up-to-speed with what was happening in these ladies’ lives. But getting time to discuss life updates in detail with no interruptions? Wow, I learned so much. I was blown away by the milestones achieved and sheer volume of changes that have happened in the past couple years.

Inspired by the “’Decade/10-Year Challenge” I keep seeing all over social media, I posed the following question to the group.

Can you imagine if we could go back to 2010 and tell our high school selves about where we are at right now?

I don’t think my 15-year-old self would have believed she would be living and working in Chicago with these friends in town for medical residency interviews.

Thinking about all that’s happened in the past 10 years and because a brand new decade is just 23 days away, I can’t help but dream about all potential and change that will also happen in the next 10 years. What will I be doing 10 years from now?!

It feels good to think back on the past decade and remember the highlights. I hope that if you have the time today, you take a few moments and jot down some of your favorite memories and accomplishments from 2010-2019. I want you to look at that list and feel really proud of yourself.

After the highlights are accounted for, I also encourage you to spend some time thinking of the really hard things that happened over this time. Not to bring up hard feelings, but to remind yourself of your resiliency and how you are able to experience some really good times and achieve big things in the midst of hard things.

Because really great things are going to happen in the next decade. And really hard things are going to happen too. But you are going to absolutely rock it. Don’t believe me? Look at that list you just created. Look at what you’ve accomplished, experienced and fought through.

Now, that’s the message I would tell my younger self from 10 years ago.