What Does it Mean to Own Your Life?

And how a word/statement changed my life

Ria Tagulinao
7 min readDec 23, 2022
Photo by Kalen Emsley on Unsplash

The theme was supposed to be “Shokunin” in 2021 and “Light” in 2020. But on both times I intended to have a theme for the year, I plucked a word practically out of thin air, announced it in some virtual space while the New Year high was still high, then, much like most of our resolutions, forgot about it the following day.

But coming into the year, I told myself, Okay, once and for all, we are going to make this Word of the Year stick.

The word for 2022 was“own”.

Why? Well, I realized last year that I struggled with executing, trying new things, and sticking to things. There were many reasons for this, but ultimately, when I dug into myself (like, Ria, for real, what exactly is the problem?), it boiled down to this: a lack of self-trust.

Whatever it is I’d be working on, at one point, some annoying voice would come in and whisper: “What if this isn’t what you’re supposed to be doing?” or “What if you’re not doing it right?” or when it comes to writing…

--

--

Ria Tagulinao

Fun-sized Filipina Writer | To stay up-to-date with my work, here's my Sunday newsletter: http://riatagulinao.substack.com