Once upon a time, my younger self watched a video of Oprah Winfrey interviewing some accomplished woman, inquiring about what the young woman felt she felt she had arrived in life. If memory serves me right, Oprah then added that she herself felt she had arrived at the age of 23.

Having now experienced 23 years myself, I must confess there was a time I willed myself into arrival, but alas, after a hard long look at my year and myself, the most I can say for myself is that I am still learning.

For me, having arrived didn’t mean I’d be a perfect individual, but that I’d be a fully realized individual who recognizes both her strengths and her shortcomings, and has found/created her purpose in life.

As much as I wished, spoke, and prayed it into being, I did not become that woman at 23. Instead, 23 taught me something I didn’t even realize I needed to learn: I needed to focus more on the type of woman I want to be rather than the type of woman others want to see me as. Admittedly, I feel there should be a balance between these two things.

Overall, 23 was an eventful, magical, exhilarating milestone in my life. I am beyond grateful for all my experiences and thankful for the many opportunities given to me so that I could pursue the things I love. So many things just seemed to be falling into place for me, and yet, deep down within myself, I know I did not arrive.

Surely, you may be wondering how I can be so very certain about this? My response is simply that I did not have that inner peace that I suspect accompanies becoming a fully realized individual. At 23, I was still speaking peace and security in myself and my abilities into existence. I also suspect that I am close becoming the woman that I want to be, but 23 has revealed to me that in order to become that person, I must focus on holistic development, focusing both on my own self-improvement as well as my personal development.

I have purposefully used the word holistic because I feel that more often than not society teaches us to valorize and ascribe importance to outward appearances at the detriment of the development of our inner selves. While I am still in the process of discovering the exact specific things I need to work on for self-improvement and personal development, I have outlined the following with respect to personal development:

• A strong sense of self
• Self-awareness
• Emotional Maturity
• Emotional Intelligence
• Principles

Self-improvement is a much more personalized endeavor, and the things which people choose to work on should naturally arise from an understanding of themselves (or that’s at least what I think).

The reality of most of our lives is that when we are young, our self-development is usually in the hands of someone else, our parents, guardians, and/or teachers. They do all the fretting over our emotional, physical, mental, social, and spiritual development because we are to young to and underdeveloped to do it ourselves. I hope that 24 is the year where I learn to take a more active personal responsibility for my own self-development, and get that much closer to arrival.

P.s. I’ll be updating this journey periodically.