Life is all about decisions.

Whether you decide to cut your hair to your shoulders or you decide to eat salad for dinner instead of a cheeseburger. Life is full of decisions and every day you have to choose what you want to do and how it will affect other people.

Although many decisions you make can affect people in your life (your friends, family, peers, etc.), there are decisions that you will come across that just primarily affect you.

For example, if you get a tattoo or a piercing, these alterations are made to your body. Not to your best friends, not to your mothers, not to anyone else around you. This alteration is something that you chose to make within yourself and it’s no one else’s place to make you feel less about a decision that you decided to make.

I know that numerous parents, especially dealing with their teenagers in college, are still trying to understand how to let their children go. They raised you, saw you at your worst and your best, and they only want the best for you. Continually parents will try to influence the decisions you make. They’re your parents, that’s their job. But eventually, as we grow older and find ourselves, parents can only influence our lives so much.

Every parent just wants their kid to make good decisions and every parent wants to protect their kid from all the dangers of the outside world.

For me, I understand that. We are the next generation and our parents only want the best for us. However, the reason why parents continue to influence our decisions is that they experienced everything we are adventuring through.

And even though, they have experienced many more years, they don’t want us to make the same mistakes that they’ve already gone through. Sometimes the fact that we have to make our own decisions is scary, not only for us but for our parents as well. But as life continues on and we get older, the decisions we make, are ours. We get older and we start making decisions about jobs, school and who we want to be.

Throughout life, every individual is faced with obstacles in which they have to choose which way they want to go. Such as, if one attends college or if one travels the world.

Every year, every month and every day each person is faced with decisions to make. It’s just how life works. However, with every decision that is made, there are consequences. Whether it’s a good or bad choice there will almost always be a chain reaction.

But from what I’ve learned from being in college and growing up, both good and bad decisions are choices that only I can make. Yes, I make bad decisions, but I learn from them and that’s all that matters.

I think that that’s better than one who just makes bad decisions out of spite from their parents. For me, I make bad decisions, I’m in college, what do you expect? But with every bad decision comes a life lesson and I will forever be grateful for that.

So, although your parents may influence your decisions, I do believe that if you don’t start making your own decisions now, you will never learn some of the greatest and most memorable life lessons.