Dear future Tiffany,

Today, if you wake up feeling just as you had yesterday, feeling disheartened, feeling down because you haven’t yet achieved the kind of success you want and are ready to give up on your dreams, WAKE UP.

Drag yourself out of bed. Force yourself to start the day productively by doing something small but easily achievable: making the bed, taking a cold shower, doing stretches — get your body and mind into the groove that it needs to be in.

And in the meantime, look over this list. These are just some of the things you’ve achieved since you started rebuilding your life:

• You’ve discovered your passions for writing and traveling
• You’ve backpacked your way through 9 countries in Southeast Asia — Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, Indonesia
• You’ve started writing full time and making money doing what you love
• You’ve lost 20 pounds in 6 months from intermittent fasting
• You’ve overcame your Youtube fear of being on camera
• You’ve taught yourself to do 12 pull-ups
• You’ve gone back to China after the breakup and you love it

I know to you, time is everything.

When you look back at the worst 9.5 years of your life, you think I can’t believe I wasted so much time.

When you realize that your parents are getting older and you have yet to repay their love by providing for them, you think I wish I was more capable.

When you look at successful writers who are making enough money to survive and dedicate themselves to their craft, you think why is my progress so slow compared to them?

But there’s one thing you’ve forgotten, and that is: one year ago, you were also feeling exactly the same way as you do today — like you haven’t done much, that there’s still so much to do and that you’re running out of time, but look at yourself now. Do you see where you are, and what you’ve achieved?

You never thought you’d travel alone to so many countries after what people have told you, but you did it anyways and now have more experiences and stories to tell than the entire 9.5 years you’ve wasted. You’re making money, and sure, the money isn’t even enough to cover rent, but at least you’re making money doing what you love and your stories are being read by tens of thousands of people every month. You never believed you could but you’re now capable of doing 12 pull-ups when you couldn’t do a single one before, and now you look better and more fit than any other moment in your life.

It’s easy to overlook your progress when you’re constantly looking at how much more you’ve still yet to achieve. But the truth is, you’re always achieving more than you think — it’s just that you don’t realize it because you have the ambition to do more.

So, wake up, get going and start your day, because one year from now you’ll look back again and realize how much you’ve progressed yet again. You’ll be very surprised.