“There is No One Right Way”

I have re-written this post multiple times. It is always hard to put your thoughts into a clear and compelling message but this idea has been the hardest to convey by far.

That being said, I will keep this post super short and simple by saying:

There is no one right way to live your life. 

I will repeat it again, seriously, there is no one right way. We have this tendency to project our way of life onto others. Once we have a concept of the way life and everything in it should be, we think everyone else who doesn’t live life that way is wrong.

We also get easily offended, when people say they are intending to live their life a different way.

Example:

Person 1 says: “I am really tired of my job and living in this area. I hate it, it is boring and too comfortable.”

Person 2’s thinks: Are they saying that my life is boring? Do they think that the way I’m living isn’t as great as their way?

You shouldn’t think like this. Everyone is unique and different, and asking the entire world or even your group of friends to live the same way you do is ludicrous.

I preach about how you should follow your dreams, ditch the 9 to 5 and live the grand life of your fantasies.

Yet, I know there are people out there who love their 9 to 5 and want to have 2.5 kids and a loving spouse. For them, that is their dream. If that is the way to a happy life for them, I say go for it with full force!

Try not to get offend or overthink when someone says anything negative about the way you live.

You get to pick your path. You get to pick your way. There is no one right way to live.

“Free Your Mind”

When I was younger, I was what I would like to call a “wild child”. With an older brother and mostly older male cousins, I was super active. The sky was the limit because of the crazy imagination I had.

My heart skipped a beat every time I heard my doorbell ring, knowing it was my neighbor telling me to come play. We would be sorcerers of the elements one day and street racers, riding our bikes down huge hills another.

Then I “grew up”. I stopped experiencing the thrill and the joy of doing things for the thrill and joy of doing them. I stopped playing like a kid and stepped away from exercising my imagination, because I thought it was dumb (stopping, ended up being the dumb thing).

After a certain age you start to do things to meet an end.

We go to work to make money. We eat healthy to lose weight. We go to college to get that job. We do things to fit in.

This somehow turned me into a person who started to fear the things that used to give me joy. I would be apprehensive about going to an event or doing something adventurous. I started focusing solely on all of the things that could go wrong and all of the reasons why I didn’t want to go.

I should have been focusing on the excitement and honing my sense of adventure. I am going to fully blame society on this one. Society made me insecure about the decision I was making, when no F’s should have been given.

Luckily, while in Peru, I was able to visit their vast desert terrain. I had never been to one before; the views blew me away.

My family and I flew down the desert dunes three stories high on a dune buggy. Then glided down them on rickety boards.

For a few hours, I remembered what it was like to be a kid again. I had no worries, nor a care in the world. I relished the great adrenaline high rushing through my body.

When you let yourself go and free your mind, you feel like the possibilities are endless. There is finally a small bit of inner peace. The feeling that everything is going to be okay builds in your mind. You also get this weird sense that, you can conquer anything.

The more and more new things I experience and the more adventures I go on, the more I start to feel these thing.

There is nothing more valuable than feeling at peace.

Go out there and free your mind. Experience new things and try some adventures. Your inner child will thank you.

“Achievement: Riding Your Motivational High”

When motivation is high, your tank is full and you are ready to go 0 to 60 in two point five seconds flat. You can climb Mt. Everest, become the next President of the United States, cure world hunger, and at the very least resist eating one of the donuts your co-worker brought into the office.

Sweets have nothing on you and your soon to be bikini clad or 6-pack etched body.

This motivation high is thrilling and always comes unexpectedly so we want to do everything we can with it.

Unfortunately, with this new found motivation comes unrealistic expectations. We think a week of dieting and a couple laps around the track will magically melt away pesky stomach fat. We think that writing a couple blog posts that are “amusing” will gain hundreds of readers in a month (just me?).

On a motivation high, we expect results and we expect them to come fast. At first you will probably see instant results and strides towards your goal, but eventually they will slow. When we see that the results are not consistent anymore, the motivation ebbs away. It is replaced by feelings of defeat and disappears like it never existed.

I have learned this lesson far more times than would be considered embarrassing. But now I know what to do, to at least not fail as hard as I did the previous times.

The next time you are inspired and riding the high of motivation, remind yourself it takes work. Do some research into how long it should take to get to where you want to be. Take that knowledge and make a practical timeline.

Try to set small benchmarks that you can measure. I challenge myself to at least post once a week. This way I can see whether or not I met my goal and can do a little dance or make a change to get a post up.

The most important thing I have learned is, do not beat yourself up if you do not meet an objective or your goal. Keep going, that spark of motivation will only completely disappear if you give up.

Ride the motivation high for as long as you can, it could take you further than you can imagine.

“5 types of Quarter-Life Crises”

Did the quarter-life crisis exist before our generation? If it did, it was probably not as prominent as it is now. Anyone else get those condescending head shakes and scoffs when you mention it?

It really does exist! I believe it stems from the fact that unlike our parents and generations before them, we grew up comfortably. When we were kids, the economy was prospering so buying goods was cheaper. Our parents could get a job with a college degree, not to mention, paying for that degree was a small fraction of what it is now. Having a stable income and a comfortable lifestyle was the key to happiness.

Growing up comfortably, what Baby-Boomers will call “entitled” (haters), has given us a need for more. That not only means more money and super cool stuff but also fulfillment and enlightenment. This craving has caused a crisis that never existed before.

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You’re Lost

Not only are jobs few and far between but the jobs we actually want are fewer and further between. That is, if you even know what you actually want to do.

If you are lost you have no idea what you want to do with the rest of your life. This crisis is probably the most common and for some, the hardest to experience.

You are probably working a job that you are unsure about, contemplating whether or not it could become a career. Thoughts about what you really want to do often plague you. You know you want to help people or to work in a field that involves sports or to do something with art but you are still not sure exactly what that is.

You just don’t know.

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You’re in Limbo

You have figured it out, you are pretty freaking sure what you want to do for the rest of your life. You feel the triumph that comes with not being lost anymore.

However, you have done very little or nothing at all in order to work towards it.

You are still scared that it will not work out and you will fail. You are still weighing the pros and cons of pursuing this dream. You consult the people around you in order to look for support and garner justification.

You are in the middle of making a change and keeping everything the same.

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You’re Stuck

You are making moves to where you want to go: filling out applications, taking classes, and making yourself better. You keep pushing to where you want to go in life but nothing seems to be working.

Rejections are all you see in your inbox. People constantly doubt you and make you feel like you are not good enough.

You feel like you are stuck where you are, no matter how hard you keep trying. You feel defeated and contemplate quitting, wondering how long it will take until you finally catch your break.

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Wanderlust

You eat, sleep, and breathe traveling. You make lists of all of the places you want to go and plan out the itineraries at warp speed. The world is a piece of art and you want to see it. Once your backpack is stuffed, you are off. You have no ties or obligations to the “real-world”.

If you do not fit the above description to some degree, you probably wish you did. You have created Pinterest boards or looked longingly at pictures of all of the places you want to visit. You want to take the steps to see all of these places but you just can not get yourself to pick up and leave.

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Jaded

You are probably more recently graduated and you do not like how life is right now. You hate the job you always thought you wanted. Everything seems really hard and nothing is going your way. You have never had to work this hard for anything.

You want to quit and give up. Life was not supposed to be this like this. You were supposed to be successful by now, you were supposed to engaged or married, you were supposed to have it all.

The world is screwing you over and you don’t like it.

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Are you in one of these (slightly over exaggerated by the author) crises? If you are like me, you suffer from a combination of these. I have probably gone threw all of these in one day.

But do not worry, you are not alone. You do not have to have everything together. The good thing about it being a quarter-life crisis is that, it means that you are only a quarter of the way threw your life.

Even people in mid-life will tell you, you never really have it all figured out.

So, don’t stress, just enjoy the ride along the way.

“Don’t Quit Before You Even Start”

Millennials are doing something that is super self-defeating with a lot more frequency. We are quitting–giving up before we even try something. All because it seems too hard, there is too much competition or worse, because we think we are “not that type of person”.

If you told me last year that I would actually enjoy running, I would have laughed in your face. If you insisted that it were true, I would have found you a number to a psychiatrist specializing in delusions.

I have always eye’d the treadmill with dread; admiring the people who seemed to glide on it with ease. The treadmill was my worst enemy and it had a mental edge over me.

Before I started to truly face the fact that I needed to grieve, I did not think I was the type of person who could share their feelings openly. I thought I was the type of person who ignored her feelings until they “went away”.

When I considered facing any intense grief looming over me, I was incredibly intimidated.

I knew in my head that these things were way too hard; impossible for me to tackle. I was not “that type of person”. I constantly procrastinated, giving up every time mentally before I even tried.

Then for some reason, I gave it a shot. I do not know exactly what pushes you to finally try something but I will surely let you know if I ever pinpoint it. Maybe I had nothing to lose? Maybe I just needed a change?

But I tried.

The treadmill is now (still do not understand this myself) my go to for cardio. I am now the type of person who runs.

I am also the type of person who expresses her emotions. Now I allow myself to feel the waves of grief as they come and go instead of running.

The funny thing is that once you try, all of the preconceived notions you had about it disappear. I thought that facing grief meant that, I would be in a constant state of sadness. I thought I would not be able to function normally. Now I know that facing it has given me an emotional freedom I had never experienced before.

There is no more intimidation or thoughts of impossibility. These once terrorizing things just become another part of your life or another thing you tried that one time.

If it is going to better you as a person in some way, there is no reason why you should not at the very least give it a shot. You owe yourself one really good try; no half assing it.

You never know, it could be a lot easier than you thought it would be. You could be “that type of person”.

“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.”

-Oprah Winfrey

“Uncertainty: The Millennial’s Biggest Fear”

The first few years after you graduate you have an infinite amount of possibilities in front you. That sounds great, in theory, but it is actually daunting. Failures and disappointments are also on the list of possibilities.

Up to this point, we have been pretty sure about where we were going. When we were in elementary school, we knew we were going to middle school, then high school, and for most of us college.

But after you graduate or cross the threshold of that last “for sure” thing, you have no idea what’s going to happen. You (and me) are stuck in this limbo of still feeling like a kid and being a settled “adult”. We have a long future to plan out in front of us.

The uncertainty of it all, scares us into picking the choices that are safest. Neglecting the big dreams that we have and things we truly want for ourselves, in order to feel comfortable. We just go with what we were always told will work and is guaranteed right now. It is the “obvious” choice to us because it seems certain; no more fear.

But if something does not challenge you, it will not change you. Feeding your fears will only hinder you from becoming the best version of yourself. No one becomes great without risk; staying comfortable means being average.

If you want to live the life of your dreams, you have to face the unknown.

I challenge you to not feed the fear of uncertainty (or any fear for that matter!). If you want to be a leading researching in your field, don’t quit because you’re scared your work will never be recognized. If you want to marry the guy/girl of your dreams, don’t settle for the next person that comes along because you’re scared you’ll never find anyone else. Average is okay to some, but hopefully not enough for you.

Nothing really goes according to plan anyway, so you can at least, pick the plan that will lead you to what you truly want out of life. We need to learn to face the fear of uncertainty now, when we are still young enough to make mistakes.

We need to teach ourselves to feed our dreams instead; don’t let fear win.