When you're young you imagine the perfect future for yourself. You think that you'll go off to a great college, meet the man of your dreams freshman year, never gain a pound and live happily ever after. If you can achieve this level of perfection good for you, but for the rest of us life usually gets in the way of these plans.
One of the hardest things to let go of is your idea of how life should be. There isn't a handbook or guidelines to life but we make it seem that way sometimes. You can't compare your progress to others. Each person is on their own journey and no two are going to look exactly alike. Jealousy won't get you anywhere and neither will fear. You have to go after what you want regardless of how scary or unattainable it may seem. You're never going to have the life you want if you don't at least try.
Life is hard and you're going to make mistakes along the way, but these mistakes don't have to define who you are as a person. You failed a test, so what? Study more for the next one. Your boyfriend broke up with you, but that doesn't mean something is wrong with you it just wasn't meant to be. You have to take life day by day and do the best you can for that day.
Don't get down on yourself about the little things. In the long run none of the small stuff is going to matter. One day you're going to be 80 and you won't hardly be able to remember what you did the day before let alone the boy who broke your heart when you were 18. All that matters is that you have people in your life who love you and I guarantee they aren't going to stop loving you just because you mess up sometimes.
A lot of times you're going to feel a little lost and you might even lose sight of the person that you are. When this happens you have two options: lose that person completely or work on finding her again. Sometimes you get off track and you don't like who you've become but who says you can't change? When you lose yourself you might just end up finding a better version while you're at it.
One thing that I know to be true about life is that it rarely makes sense. Sometimes all you have is the power to pick yourself up and try again. You have to wake up every day thanking God for giving you the opportunity to make it better than the last. Start each day with the mindset that it's going to be a good one. If you decide you're going to have a good day or even life, it will be.
Life will have a way of working itself out in the end. It may be confusing, ridiculous and sometimes it will hurt, but there's also going to be a lot laughter and beauty in it too.
