If You Feel Like Everything Is Going Wrong, Starting Over Can Make It All Right

The thing about life is that throughout our journey here we change into many different versions of ourselves. Somewhere underneath everything is our central self, or who we are when we are completely alone, but each encounter and situation in life morphs and alters who we are in one way or another, creating a different circumstantial version of who we are for that moment in time. Often, we can’t even see that we have changed until we reflect in hindsight.

Think about this for a minute. Have you been different with each relationship? What about who you were with your old job verses who you are now? Sometimes it’s a new location that alters us the most. My point is that we are constantly evolving and don’t even notice it most of the time. The world has a way of changing us, when in reality we have the power to change our own world too. Who’s to say we can’t forcefully change ourselves and the things that surround us when shit gets tough then?

No one really warns you that your 20s are the most difficult years of your life. When we were young we dreamed of this independence, but no one warned us about the struggles that would come along with it. They never told us about how difficult it would be to find financial stability. When we were younger we all watched Disney movies with romantic happy endings, but no movie could prepare us quite enough for the pain that comes along with having your heart completely shattered. There’s this unspoken nostalgia some of us experience when we crave to be elsewhere. We miss something we haven’t even yet experienced and no one talks about that.

They also never warned us about how friends sometimes leave your life as easily as they enter it. They never told us how it would feel when nothing seems to be going right in your life. Welcome to your 20s. They taught us how to walk, but not how to move forward. We’re itching for more. We’re dying to get out of this mundane situation. Yet we are not being proactive about it.

One day your broken heart will heal, you’ll find the job of your dreams, and you’ll travel to the places that have been calling your heart. One day you’ll be laughing at yourself years from now while reminiscing about how silly you were to be this stressed out about the little things that don’t even matter in the long run. Now is not that one day yet, but you can do things to help pave the road to get there.

You can change yourself by taking back your life and navigating towards whatever kind of future you want.

You can’t always go with the flow and let life change you. That’s not enough. Sometimes you need to change your life.

So here’s my proposal to you:

Take a step back and look at your life. Are you happy? I mean genuinely happy, not the false bullshit facade we all put on for one another in social situations when we encounter someone we haven’t seen in a while. Be honest with yourself. Are you happy? Is this where you want to be? Is this who you want to be with? Will you regret things in the future if you don’t make a change now?

Life is way too short to settle for the things, people, and places that no longer bring you happiness.

Change is easily the scariest and rewarding thing you could give yourself. Deciding to make a change is the first step, and all it takes is one giant leap of faith, which comes from the self-reflection of deciding what no longer suits you. It’s completely normal to fear the unknown and the great abyss of possibilities, and possible rejections, that will come from making a change. Just remember that this is your life, and while there are many factors of it that are beyond your control, you do have the power to embrace change and start over when you want to, as often as you want to.

You’re the only one standing in your way.