Nowadays, we’re expected to have our entire lives planned out by the time we turn 18. We’re supposed to answer questions such as, "Where are you going to college?", "What career path will you pursue?" and, "When will you start saving for your 401k (ha)?" Society brainwashes us to believe that if we want to be successful and happy, we need to know exactly where we want to be in 50 years. I’m here to tell you society is wrong.
By the time I was headed off to college I had a plan. Not only did I have a plan but, I had an excellent plan, convinced fulfilling my goals and ideas would bring me a lifetime of happiness and personal achievement. I was going to be a varsity athlete, finish my undergrad degree in three years, attend an accelerated graduate school and then move out west to work for a Fortune 500 corporation. Sounds pretty good, right? Wrong.
By the time I finished my third semester, I was miserable. The vision I had created for myself was not nearly as good as I had made it out to be in my head. I was living a complete and utter lie, pretending to be someone I wasn’t. So one morning I woke up and decided I didn’t want to be angry anymore. I was the only person who had the power to change my situation, and I wasn’t going to let anyone stop me. I quit sports, joined a sorority, opted out of grad school, and chose to stay in school an extra semester, because who really wants to graduate at 20 years old anyways?
To this day, that was the best decision of my 20 years of existence on this planet. I’m no longer afraid of change; I embrace it.
When we welcome change in our lives, a lot of different things happen. We find out who our real friends are; the truth is you will lose some people along the way but in the end, the people left are the only ones that matter. We learn a lot about ourselves, about what really matters to us and what doesn’t. We realize time is forward-moving; you cannot take back the past, and that means sometimes we need to accept the things that we have no control over.
But the most important lesson comes from within. We understand that at the end of the day the only person who has to live with our choices is ourselves. We learn to stop trying to make people happy at our own expense. We learn it’s OK to change our minds, in fact if we didn’t step back once and a while to evaluate our lives, we would be very boring, mediocre people. We learn to adjust our plans to fit our ever-changing selves. And we realize that when it comes down to it, the only person in control of our happiness is ourselves. So embrace change, don’t stick to a plan and be sure to always, always, always put yourself first.
