Today, there are so many points of influence that impact us—social media, TV, movies, and even the people we hang out with on a day-to-day basis. Some of these influences can positively impact our lives. However, there are many influences, as we all know, that can negatively affect us as well. What if it's not a social media platform or TV show telling us how we should live our lives, but instead, the people around us? I'm here to tell you that they aren't—and they never were—in charge of your life. It's time to take back control of your life and make it your own.
Newsflash! Nobody owns anybody.
I don't know what happened to common courtesy over the past few years, but I don't remember people taking over other people's lives to be an aspect of it. There is a huge difference between doing something to protect someone and bossing someone around like you own them. If you feel like wearing make-up, then wear it. If you feel like wearing sweats to school, wear them. If you feel like studying something when your family wants you to study something else, study what YOU want, whether its art, computers, sociology, or quantum physics. It doesn't matter what you do, good or bad. Whether it's for the people around you or just for yourself, you will still be critiqued and judged. To be perfectly honest with you, I'd much rather be judged for doing what I think is right than live a life where I'm not completely happy. After all, it is my life, not theirs.
What matters is what YOU want to do and how YOU want to live your best life.
Now, by saying this, I do not condone bad behavior, violence, or anything that negatively affects yourself or others. Rather, I encourage people to study what they want to study and to study it passionately. Where there is passion, there is most likely pursuit. Do I care about how people said that being a therapist is the only job I can get with a degree in psychology? Nope, I couldn't care less. That doesn't change the fact that there are still people out there who look down on people who want to pursue certain subjects for degrees (e.g. music, writing, technology/computer science, etc.). What should matter is what you want to do and how you want to live in order to live your best life. This doesn't apply only to what you want to pursue (if you want to pursue anything at all); this also goes for everything previously mentioned and more. Whether or not you want to wear make-up is completely up to you. Whoever you want to love, whether they're the same, different, or not of any gender, is entirely up to you. However you want to express yourself is, once again, up to you.
To those people who tell others how to live their lives—no one asked you.
You will spend a lot of your life with yourself in any given situation. You should be happy with who you are and what you do in and with your life. And to all those people who do, in fact, tell others how to live their lives—no one asked, so let them live their lives. Sorry-not-sorry to break it to you, but you aren't in charge of anyone else's life, so stop acting like you are. Take control of your life and live every minute of it.
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