We’re all growing and learning in this stage of our lives. It’s been a big transition, for me at least, and one thing that I learned is that you are in control of your own life so you have to do what you gotta do to make it right for you.
When we were younger, we had new role models every couple of years & our parents heavily influencing us, but now we’re getting to the age where we need to start thinking independently. This is something that I struggle with because my parents are a big influence on me. I always say that my parents are my top critics. They are the only people that are going to keep it real with me. They are who I am mostly concerned with making proud, whose perception of me I care about and stuff like that. My whole life, my actions have been solely based on “What will my parents think if I did that?” and there’s nothing wrong with that mindset, but it becomes a problem when that becomes too much of an influence.
Even though I am a piece of my parents, the things I like and the things they like are not always aligned. They do want the best for me, but only I truly know what’s for ME. That’s something that I had to realize for myself this year. I noticed that I was sketching out my life, using what they wanted as my guide when I should have been incorporating my own pleasures and interests as well. I came to college, walking for them and it has, slowly, been killing the livelihood in me. Imagine living a life for someone else? What are you gaining? How would that make you feel?
For me, it was like I was in my own bubble just floating around, purposeless. Not sad or anything, just living you know? I had to realize that all my parents ever wanted for me is to be happy and successful in whatever I chose to do. When I was younger they were always talking about being a doctor so I could make X amount of money and they can retire and be taken care of. I just never understood why they never saw a possibility of that with me being something other than a doctor, why not something I actually wanted to spend the rest of my life doing? I really believed that if I wasn’t a doctor that I’d be taking a L and letting them down but that’s not the case at all. I had a talk with my mom last week, and it made me realize that my parents love me, dearly, and would be proud of me regardless.It doesn’t matter if I’m a doctor, lawyer, teacher, entrepreneur, etc as long as I was happy and accomplishing goals for myself they were going to be pleased. With that information, I had to rethink my life and make new plans for me to pursue my own dreams so that I could be happy and make them happy as well. This is probably the biggest realization I’ve had this semester but I’m glad I had that talk with my mom when I did and got all of that cleared that up.
Now I’m working on living my best life for me.