I used to think that changing your mind meant you didn’t know what you were doing.
From the ripe age of five we’re asked what we want to be when we grow up. We answered with brilliant dreams of being astronauts, movie stars, singers, etc. But we didn’t really know what any of it meant at the time.
But the question doesn’t stop at five. We’re constantly pressured to decide early what we are going to be. They make it seem we have to have it all figured out before we are even adults.
Let’s be honest, none of us had any idea what we truly wanted to do when we graduated high school (even some college graduates). Yet, we are obsessed with certainty, planning every single step to take before we realize there’s a better path right next to us.
College is where I think we finally start to notice.
This is when we realize those same adults asking what we wanted to be at five didn’t necessarily know what they wanted either. Because adults constantly change their minds about what they want for their life.
You see it all around you in college. Relationships—platonic or romantic—coming and going, majors changing, it’s all part of the continuous process of changing our minds.
I’ll never forget the first time I had an older student in a class with me. It shocked me at first: why would a retired man want to come back to college?
So, I asked him, and he told me, “I felt like I wasn’t done learning and growing.”
I didn’t know how to respond to him then, and I still don’t, but that stuck with me. How could he not feel done? Aren’t we told that’s the age we are supposed to be?
Then I remembered who I am, and I’ve never been the person to follow what society tells me. Yet here I was doing just that, following the steps of societal standards. Going to class, to work, to clubs; getting executive positions, volunteering, adding anything I could to my resume.
I was doing what I wanted, but in the way that society told me I had to do it. I lost my spark for doing the things I enjoyed and was just walking through mindlessly doing them.
Maybe that was the problem. I had spent too much time trying to become the person I thought I was supposed to be that I forgot I was allowed to become someone else.
I think we put too much pressure on ourselves to make permanent decisions about temporary versions of ourselves. We choose a major at 18 and wonder why we don’t feel the same way at 20. We make friends and assume they will be there forever. We create five-year plans as if we are supposed to know exactly what the person we will be five years from now wants.
We’re constantly changing.
The things that mattered to me five years ago don’t all matter to me now. Some of my goals and opinions changed, and the things that I once thought defined me don’t anymore. And, honestly, I hope it continues.
Because maybe changing your mind isn’t a sign that you don’t know what you’re doing. Maybe it’s a sign that you’re paying attention.
I’m starting to think there is something beautiful about being able to say, “I don’t want this anymore,” or “I think I was wrong,” or even, “I want to try something completely different.” Those sentences don’t erase the person you were before; they show that you were willing to listen to the person you were becoming.
I think back to that student in my class who came back to college because he wasn’t done learning and growing. At the time, I couldn’t understand it. I thought there was supposed to be a point when you finally become the person you were going to be.
Now, I think I understand him a little better. Maybe we are never supposed to be done.
Maybe the goal isn’t to have every decision made, every box checked, and every step planned out. Maybe the goal is to leave enough room in our lives to surprise ourselves.
So, change your mind.
Change your major, your plans, your definition of success. Change your routine, your opinion, your mind about what you thought you could do.
And if you wake up one day and realize that the life you planned no longer feels like the life you want, you don’t have to be ashamed of that. You can choose again.
After all, we’re all still learning and growing.