There will be times in life that, no matter what you decide, no matter what you do, people will question your choices and second guess you. Everyone else will have an opinion about your life and what you should do, how you should live your life. But, guess what? YOU must accept responsibility for the choices you make, YOU must accept the consequences of your decisions, not other people.
Advice
Now, I’m not suggesting you should completely ignore other people’s advice, especially when it’s eminently sensible e.g. work hard at what you do, or stay away from drugs, alcohol and tobacco. But there will be times in life where you must have the confidence and the courage to stand on your own two feet, to say “this is who I am, this is what I stand for, this is where I’m going in life” and be ready to defend that stance against any challenge.
Career
Your parents’ pressure to become a medical doctor may be given with the best of intentions – they want you to have a solid career that is stable, pays well, and is highly respected in society. But if there are other career paths that you feel genuinely passionate about, and not medicine, then it may be time to rethink whether you will cave in to parental pressure regarding your career choice.
Marriage
Perhaps the perfect “girl next door” who you have been dating for a few years wants to marry you, and all your family and friends think she is terrific. But, maybe after serious soul searching you realize that she is not the person you truly want to commit to the rest of your life with. It may be time to challenge your friends and family to NOT marry this girl. And this goes the other way as well, for the ladies who decide they don’t want to marry that “perfect guy” that all her friends and family think is great.
Business
Maybe you want to run a business that you have a powerful vision for, but family and friends are pressuring you to take the “safe, respectable” route of a salaried job in the corporate world. Is your vision for your business strong enough? Do you feel it is genuinely the right path for you? Will it bring out your best qualities, is it a path that you can walk with honor? Be ready to fight for it! Work hard to prove that your choice of running the business that you have a strong vision for is indeed the right choice.
Make Your Own Choices
If you let other people dictate your life choices, when times get hard (and it will), you will likely be cursing the decision to let other people decide your life for you. Now, following your own path and your own decisions can still result in hard times, but at least it will be walking the path that you chose for yourself. So make sure that you are the master architect of your own life.
What do you think? Please leave a comment.