How To Deal With Growing Up
At some point in life, we wake up one day and go ‘Shit, I am grown up!’. You might freak out and get drown in confusion not knowing what to do with your life or how to reach the ideal picture that you have in mind.
Don’t fret, that’s part and parcel of life!
1. Have fun with life, enjoy every fucking moment.
Upon the realisation of growing up, you probably have not had a lot of social responsibilities attached to you yet. Congrats! Now you have abundance of time and freedom at your finger tips.
Go travel! Explore the world, meet people, and explore many many ways of living lives.
Adults feed us with their version of stories but there are billions of different stories available on this planet and we have the freedom to create our own unique version. You should collect stories, explore the richness this world has to offer, and get excited about the choices you have! (Also, it makes you an interesting date)
Also, at some point in life, the opportunity cost of your time increases and you probably will not be proud to explore the world on shoe string budget anymore.
So do it now. Have fun no matter what.
2. It is okay to fail.
Or maybe, failure is non-existent. Just like cold is the absence of heat, failure is the absence of success. From every absence of success, you learn, you improve, you remake, and you achieve your goal (or not). If you don’t succeed, you repeat the cycle of remaking.
If you achieve your goal, now what? You continue with the process of learning, improving and remaking to create a better version of previous success and this form an infinite cycle in your life.
Failure is not an end or a start, it is just a process equivalent to success.
Most of the time we feel defeated and perceive something as failure because people around us make us see it that way. We are using our parents’, uncles’ , aunties’, peers’ ruler to measure our life, happiness, and achievement.
You should have a ruler and a set of values of your own.
Ask yourself instead: “What can I learn from this experience?” , “What can I change about my approach for next time?”, or “How can I use this situation to my best benefit?”
One of the perks of being young is the freedom to try. If you do things that you are passionate about, you will care enough not to let it fail. Even if you do not succeed, you will perceive it as a lesson and not failure and just keep doing.
3. You can be whoever you want to be
Along the way, after trial and error, you will discover pattern in your likes, dislikes and things that you are drawn to. Do what you want for yourself and not to be a person you think people like. There are many types of personality traits and many ways of living lives.
Some people are meant to lead and shine on top of the social pyramid; while some people shine from the bottom. Both are great.
Greatness does not mean appearing on the cover of Forbes, People or Times. It is generosity in sharing your magic, no matter how much or how little you own. A chef in a neighbourhood restaurant who cooks awesome food can be as great as the mayor of city who keeps the city in order; because both bring goodness to people around them.
Be the one who define your own greatness.
4. Defining ‘Grow Up’
Are you grown up? Growing up? Need to grow up?
What changes? What is the difference between grown up and non-grown up?
Do we stop changing and stop learning after becoming a grown up?
Growing up is about taking responsibility for yourself and giving back to the society that has nurtured you. You could be discovering and striving for different goals along the path. You keep changing, improving.
Most importantly, you appreciate the many different paths that you have taken with gratefulness.
Back to the core, there is no one size fit all theory to deal with growing up.
This world is not a jungle but a playground. Find your game, create your rule.
