30 Days of Navigating Life as a 23-Year-Old: Day 18 — Start Saying NO.
You May Not Know What You Want. But You Know What You Don’t Want.
I am going through a period of major transformation and changes in my life and career currently. Things are indeed shifting. And when things change, a lot of chaos and uncertainty follows. It has been the same with me for a while now. There are periods of surety & certainty and the very next moment, feelings of being lost follow.
And whenever humans face change and uncertainty, we tend to look to the outer world, desperately looking for as much as a straw to hold on to, in order to not drown. We always tend to look for help outside of us rather than turn to the guide present inside of us. We go on knocking on people’s doors and asking them questions we already have answers to. We keep asking people to tell us what we should do with our lives. We believe there is a solution out there that is easier and more convenient than the one we have for ourselves.
But why would we ever want another to tell us how to live our lives when every human life is so unique and different from each other? If two lives ever had to be the same, there wouldn’t exist two of them in the first place!
The unfortunate thing is that seeking external guidance is not only supported but celebrated in the current society. Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with seeking advice and turning to your trusted people while making any life decisions. The problem arises when you use their suggestions and advice to hamper your decision-making ability and end up getting lost in the myriad of external opinions.
Something similar happened to me recently. I have been at a crossroads with respect to my career. And although I know exactly what I want to do in life, the thought of it does scare me. I know and believe that it is achievable and I’m taking measurable, concrete steps to create the life I envision for myself. However, I always find myself being scared of that dream not working out and things not going my way. That’s when my logical brain pops up and asks me to plan a backup career that I can fall onto and is ‘safe’.
As I started considering this logical reasoning of my brain, I started interacting with multiple people asking them about their jobs and career paths. And I ended up being exposed to numerous suggestions, advice, and opinions. And although every single one of them came from a place of pure intentions and well-wishing, almost none of them really fit right with me.
Every single one of them made logical sense. It was the most obvious rational step to take. However, deep in my gut, I knew that wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing. I knew that wasn’t my calling. I just knew that those suggestions, that path would just not be right for me.
However, I felt myself being under unnecessary pressure to listen to everyone and ‘try out new things’ because I was young and still ‘figuring it out’. Everyone told me to experiment and explore things because what’s the harm in it anyway? And although I’m all for exploring and experimenting, there are some things you know deep down are not meant for you. You know it a little too well that you absolutely do not want to engage in those things — no matter how many people are doing it and how wonderful the results have been. You know it. You feel it. Deep down. It’s extremely clear that there are certain things you absolutely do not want to do.
Especially being at an early stage in my career with very little work experience, the common phrase I hear from everyone around me is, “Try out everything. You never know what works out.” As much as I agree with it, there are some things I know are not meant for me. Even when I am at a budding stage, there are some things I just do not feel called to do no matter how many people influence me to do it. It does not resonate. And that is okay.
I believe this is what the majority of us struggle with. Many of us are still trying to figure out what we truly want to do in our lives, or what we want to achieve. But in spite of not knowing what we want to do, we have a strong sense of what we do not want to do. We know that there are certain things that do not click with us no matter how well it fits in with a majority of the others.
The struggle is to acknowledge and accept that there are certain things that we can choose not to do, in spite of our external reality trying to condition us to believe otherwise. It is okay for us to take a stand for ourselves and choose what we engage in and what we don’t — irrespective of our age, our experience, and our expertise.
It is time we start being more gentle with ourselves and start trusting in our inner guidance, our inner knowing. It is time we listen to our intuition, our inner compass and do only the things that resonate deeply with us, no matter what the external world is telling us to do.
It is time we start saying NO more and YES to only those things that bring out full body yes from within us!
Thanks for reading this far. I am on a 30-day writing challenge. Follow along and support me on this journey!
