... Goals and Aspirations

What am I supposed to do with my life? 

 How will I achieve my goals? 

 What are my goals? 

                                        

 … What do I really want?

If you’ve dealt with these questions or dealing with them as you’re reading this blog, maybe you will find some comfort in knowing that you’re not alone. Many other people (young or older) face this dilemma on a daily basis, feeling confused and anxious while at the same time living a life that sometimes doesn’t feel like their own!

It’s pretty easy to figure out why people think their lives are not their own: society has a plan for you before you’re even born. Finish school, go to college, get a job, get a second job, get another one that pays better than the first two combined, hopefully pay off your college debt (if you went to college and your parents couldn’t help out), at some point you should marry, have kids, buy a house, if you don’t buy a house, own a big apartment… and somewhere along the process of getting through all your “responsibilities” you might be able to do something for yourself. But that’s only if you have time… 

It can get pretty crazy right? Studies show that almost no college student has a 100% idea of what he/she wants to do with his/her life. Some majors are even looked down upon because “…what kind of job can you get with that degree?” It’s not about what you will learn, what matters the most is what you can do to earn money with it. If you’re lucky enough to have a paying job after college in this economy, your biggest dream is to either get hired full time or get another job because you have college debt. And all the money you’re making you already owe to someone else. 

To be clear: I’m not saying you don’t need college because all you’re going get a shitty job after that. I wouldn’t exchange my college years for anything, I majored in one of those “looked down upon” majors and I couldn’t be more grateful for the things I learned and the people I met along the way. I also think that I wouldn’t be who I am today had I not gone to college. But if I had taken some time before college to think about what I want to do with my life, I may have saved myself from some periods of sheer agony that I also experienced during my college years. And that feeling of sheer agony was rooted in the fact that I sort of knew what I wanted to do but society had no time for me to plan it out.

It becomes difficult to separate what we really want for ourselves and what society, our parents, friends or our teachers want for us. At some point, all these wishes become one and because they’re conflicting (you want to be a ballerina but your parents still dream of the dentist they wanted you to become) you don’t know which way to go: you can’t be everything and most importantly, you can’t be everything everybody else wants you to be! What about yourself? 

Easier said than done. The world has invested a great deal in you following a certain path and there’s no time or patience for what you want. If it goes with the PLAN, then that’s fine, congrats and enjoy your awesome life J But if you try to do things differently, there will be a reaction and it usually comes with a trip down Guilt Road…

“Why do you want to drop out of college and throw your future away?”

 

                       “There’s no money in what you want to do, so why do it?”

“Think about your family!!!”

                       “What will people say if they hear you quit/dropped out?”

… People and society will always have an opinion on what you do. It’s not illegal. They can tell you what they think you should do. But they can never tell you what to do! If you go along with what everybody else wants, you will end up with a sad life that’s not even yours and hopefully it won’t be too late to do something by the time your realize it. It’s very hard to go against society and even harder to protest to the people you love and want to satisfy the most. They might not even support you at first but they will eventually come around once they realize that what you’re doing is not hurting anyone – it’s just different from what they had imagined.

So how do you figure out what you want to do with your life while the rest of the world if hovering over your shoulder making sure you stick to somebody else’s plan? It starts from within: what makes you happy? It could be something big or the simplest thing in the world. Think about when you smile the most, when you feel most at peace or when you’re the most confident. And it doesn’t have to be concrete: the whole point of this is to figure out your life’s plan as you go, not to come up with a new plan that’s slightly better than the one society had for you. So, think about it… maybe you’re happier when you’re drawing or sketching, playing video games or styling your friend’s hair; maybe you enjoy being around people the most or when you travel.

For example, you might be a very creative person: you love creating new hairstyles, mixing clothes, making jewelry, decorating – whatever! So focus on that and find a profession and a way of life that satisfies your creativity. Think of the elements in your life that make you happy. And just to be clear, you don’t need to pause everything you were doing before so as to figure out what you want to do with your life: you can still hold a job, go to school, travel, meet friends… but with a different mindset. 

Fortunately, there’s no one way of doing things. And if anyone says you’re wasting your time, that’s just their opinion, not the law. It costs the same amount of money to do a lot of things so whether you decided to invest in a trip or a year in college or work, the only thing that matters is that you did things because you wanted to. Not because someone else told you to. 

 *S