You've spent the better half of your life living in the same old high school mentality. The only thing you were always focused on doing was growing up. Now that it's happened, you're frantically moving your foot around, trying to find the brake. Life came at you fast- almost too fast. One minute you were ready to get a head start on being independent and living on your own, now you're standing in the middle of it and your head is spinning.

How can you be ready to be an adult version of yourself if you still haven't even discovered who you are? This has been what I've been preaching to my friends and family for a good, couple of months. You've spent a majority of your life focusing on getting to this pivotal point in your life that you didn't have time to enjoy the journey there.

Somewhere along the way you lost sight of yourself. You lost sight of what you value most in and out of life because you were so focused on application deadlines and choosing a career path to secure your future.

Now it's time for you to find the brakes on life and just pump them a little bit. I don't mean come to a complete stop, that's a little excessive. You just need to tap them with your toes to slow your speed down a little bit, enough for you to take in the world around you. There is an entire world of new people and new experiences around you that you didn't get a chance to take in.

My first suggestion is to find a day where you are free from work or school. If you can't find one, then call off from one of the two. Trust me, it's in the name of mental health so you are allowed a free pass. On this particular day that you are free, a good start would be to breathe. It's a good pause in your life for you to relax and let all of the weight that is currently on your shoulder, fall off. It will feel relieving.

From then on, the day is yours. You could take this day in two directions. You could spend the day doing one of your favorite things that you haven't been able to do in a while, like read a book, write a story, or paint that oil painting you've been seeing in your head everyday. Or you could decide to take it in a new direction and try something that you've been thinking about for a while. For instance, I've been saying that I was going to try yoga one day. It's funny because I always seemed to say it, but never actually did it. When I did try it, it gave me a sense of having control in my life. I realized that not everything should be consumed by work or school and that I have a life of my own that I also need to live.

I started doing things like this for myself at least once a week. It was a way of me getting back in touch with who I am and who I want to be. I went from talking to my mom on the phone once a week to talking to her every day. I want my future to have my mom in it because she's what's important to me. I started reading more books because that's what I enjoy doing the most and I don't want to lose that part of my happiness. I even decided to further explore my religion that had fell off the tracks at one point.

I'm not telling you that you have to call your mother every day or you have to read a book. I'm telling you to to grab at life with your fists and take control of it.

It's your life and you determine your future. If you want your future to involve any of the things or people that make you happy, then you have to take control of that.

It's yours and you decide who is in control of it.