"Do what makes you happy."
Simple, profound advice. But why is it so hard to follow?
In my opinion, the culprit is easily society. Society is what makes us doubt ourselves when we’re following our heart.
This can be applied to any occasion. It can be something as small as how you dress. Maybe wearing dresses is what makes you happy. Then, there’s always going to be someone on the opposing side saying dresses are too girly.
Or maybe what makes you most happy is wearing sweatshirt and jeans. Again, there’s always going to be criticism coming from society, saying maybe that’s a lack of effort or you’re “lazy.”
There’s always going to be someone who disagrees with you, so you might as well do what makes you most happy.
A bigger struggle, and a battle many young adults face with society, is choosing between happiness vs. success. We are in college and trying to figure out what we want to do with the rest of our lives. That, in itself, is a tremendous load of pressure.
Now, let's bring in the fact that some of the choices we make are constantly being looked down upon for not being “good enough".
Students want to pursue what they're interested in, as they’ve always been told to do. But yet, they’re slandered and told they’re never going to get a job if they study that.
Then they are told, “Well, you do what you do to be successful.”
But?
What happened to doing what you do to be happy? So the real question comes back to happiness vs. success: which one is more important?
Would you rather be miserable working at your job, but being able to afford luxuries, or would you rather be doing what makes you the happiest and just get by?
Yes, I can see where it becomes hard to pick which one outweighs the other, but it does come down to money never buying you happiness.
Really, the goal in life is to be happy.
If you’re happy with life, despite not making a wealthy wage, then why not go down that route?
I truly believe that to live the best life we can, we should always do what makes us happy.