The thing about being young is that we have all been sufferers of self-doubt. Am I in the right major? Do I have the right friends? Is this school right for me? Did I make the right choice dating this person?
A lot of big life decisions have been spurred by the advice from others to “just go with your gut.” They always say to trust your instincts. You know yourself best. Most of the time, you decide to act on desire from the basis that it feels right, do you not?
We all do it. I mean, sometimes we make decisions in spite of the fact that they feel wrong, but that’s beside the point. We want so badly to be able to trust ourselves, to know our own hearts and minds inside and out.
The catch-22 about this, however, is that our lives are constantly fluid. Our experiences change and our perceptions of ourselves and the world around us change in turn. This can more often than not lead to self-doubt. The trick to combating it is to remember that you cannot always base your future choices and opinions on whether or not they conflict with what they might’ve been in the past.
Oftentimes it is necessary to consider what choices you’ve previously made and why you made them, but in the grand scheme of going forward, you have to make decisions based on what’s going to be good for the person you’re going to be, not the person you were.
So, amidst our ever-changing selves and environments, we tend to look towards our inner instinct; the brightest bulb that goes off, the loudest voice in the chorus of conflicting doubt and affirmation. We try to always go with our gut because if we cannot trust ourselves, how are we supposed to make it in life?
The thing is that your gut instinct will be wrong sometimes. This is a simply unavoidable fact of life experience. It will be wrong, but it’s okay. Another weird paradox of life is that we may never fully know ourselves as well as we might think; there are some parts that are hidden away, waiting for the right circumstances to show themselves. It’s frustrating, but it’s just one of those things that you have to take in stride. Uncertainty is, ironically, one of the most certain things to come by.
This all may sound like faux-philosophical nonsense, but I hope it speaks to some of your own experiences. You went with that major because you were sure that it would lead to the career you were right for. A year later, you’re studying something completely different. You fell for that person because it felt more right than anything you’d ever felt before, but here you are now knowing that you’re not meant for each other after all.
One of the greatest gifts of life is that we have the ability to choose. No one ever makes the right choices one hundred percent of the time, but you wouldn’t learn anything if your choices didn’t fail you now and again.
Your gut instinct will be wrong sometimes, but keep trusting it. Never stop having faith in yourself.
