Find yourself first.
The air feels heavy and groggy, your eyes won’t open and the world around you is collapsing, while there’s nothing you can do to control it. There’s a mental checklist in your head, but you dismiss that and repeatedly hit the snooze alarm until you’re 10 minutes late for those breakfast plans that you made with your friends. You’re in your twenties and flat-out overwhelmed with your current self. There is so much pressure about what you’re doing with your life.
Family parties are the worst because it’s basically a self-inflicted trivia game among family members versus you and your expected life goals. Your friends invite you to hangout, to go and do something really exciting, but you have to work. Then you begin experiencing serious FOMO. That person you've had your eye on keeps asking you to hangout while you're busy, and you can’t seem to understand why the universe hates you. At some point, it not only feels like the universe hates you, but it feels as though your life is coming to a halt. You’re experiencing all of these new changes, but you can’t seem to find a balance between them all. You’re not quite sure how this whole “adult” thing works.
Now, you begin questioning if it will ever work at all, until you're curled up on your bed on a beautiful night, with a bowl of ice cream and some sappy Netflix movie, to make sense of the tears that won’t stop pouring out of your eyes. The next thing you know, you’re 15 pounds heavier than you were last year because that one bowl of ice cream turned into eight, and that one innocent night of crying turned into a million countless nights of going out, having a great time and forgetting responsibility.
When summer approaches, you look at yourself in the mirror and see nothing but the person that you never wanted to be. Your shirts become tighter, your favorite party pants no longer button around your waist and your chin grows a friend or two. You go from being overwhelmed about life, to being overwhelmed about yourself and the way people view you. It’s just that sometimes you have to forget what you feel and remember what you deserve.
If there’s one thing that people really forget, especially within the 18 to 20-something age range, it's that everybody's human. Everybody has two eyes, a nose and a large brain with over one billion thoughts scrambling through as it tries to distinguish the difference between right, wrong and acceptable. Everyone experiences their ups and definitely their downs, and these experiences not only help us grow and accomplish adulting, but make us stronger as individuals.
There will always be that person who doesn’t like you, there will always be that significant other or personal love interest who makes you feel as though you aren't worth it. There will always be somebody whose attention you're constantly fighting and you'll always bring yourself down if that attentiveness isn't reciprocated. But, the truth of the matter is that we are all significantly different in our own ways.
We were not put on this Earth to impress and please everybody. Many times, we find ourselves silently comparing ourselves to someone whether we consciously or subconsciously realize it. We were designed to please one person and that person is our self. Believe it or not, there is someone out there who looks at you and thinks, Man, I wish I had a smile like that, or Wow! I wish I were as smart as them. They're so lucky! We were built as different individuals and, although we may tell our best friend that they are literally the same person as us, we all know that this is far from true. Our best friends are our best friends for a reason and it's because these are the people who support us, that don't judge us and are always there to pick us up when we’ve run out of Netflix movies to watch on our I-am-feeling-terribly-down days.
It's normal to feel pressure and anxiety, especially between the developing years post-high school and post-college. However, these years also exist, because they're a time for you to shine. It isn’t a time to impress or fit in with your cool suite mate or that girl everyone loathes because her hair is perfect and she is just so smart. The truth is that you have the power to be that person and, quite honestly, that “perfect” person is probably struggling with their own inner conflict. With a little bit of self-motivation, time, effort and a charismatic, optimistic attitude anything is possible.
Overall, it's important to remember that all of the time spent trying to impress others is a block of time wasted. You could be using this time to impress yourself and make yourself the best you that you can be. There is nobody in this world who is a better you than you! Nobody will ever be able to duplicate your likes and interests, so go ahead and flaunt your favorite band or take a risk and share your favorite thing to do--something you've always feared you'd be criticized for.
The people who criticize have no idea who they are. They don’t feel comfortable enough to accept your weaknesses and uncommon interests, so instead of supporting you, they dismiss you. It's also important to remember that these people are simply not meant for you. You are wonderful and you are an extravagant human being who has the power to change the world. Don’t get stuck in the norm --that’s boring. Be exciting, be adventurous and put your best effort into every single waking hour. Life is short and it’s impossible to turn back time. Take risks, laugh at a stupid joke, and do the things that you’ve always dreamed of doing. Whatever happens, happens.
Once you figure out exactly what you want, everybody else’s strange interests begin to interest you, but not because you're trying to be like them. It's because you're genuinely interested in their life and getting to know who they are as a person.
Each one of us was put on this earth with a purpose., so take care of how you speak to yourself, because in the end, you are the only one listening.
