No More Living By the Permission of Others

Part of the reason I decided to major in Philosophy was to seek truth about some of life’s most daunting questions. I think we all branch outside of ourselves to find what’s right and find what path we should take.  Whenever I was stomped for guidance I would survey others and gather their opinions to see if there was any underlying truth. I started to feel that the easy thing to do was turn to other people in times of uncertainty to figure out answers I needed. I did this because in moments of anxiety, my own judgment may have been clouded or I may have had limited perception to the whole picture. But something I’ve learned is that too many voices in your ear can leave you unhappy and confused. Most important, when you rely on other people's advice so often it makes you less confident in making your own decisions. And speaking my for myself, there's no good reason I should ever feel less than confident in my own decision-making. Here's why...

I'm learning that living is no different from what I've been doing in school the last 16 years as a remarkable star student. When faced with a problem I evaluate all the information presented, and make a deliberate and well-thought-out decision based upon that. As a result sometimes I get the answers wrong but most times I get the answers right. The absolute truth is that living to please the greatest number of people, picking the perfect person to fall in love with, or ensuring that I’ll be happy as possible is not something I can practice for. I can only process the information I do know to help me make careful decisions, and it doesn't need for 20 calls to be made to back me up. Making careful decisions allowed me to escape a web of distractions while growing up in an at-risk neighborhood. Making careful decisions allowed me to make it to places I only use to dream about. Therefore, I have to learn to embrace my decision-making and drown out other peoples opinions. My fear is that taking too much advice could advise me right out of a dream, great opportunity or personal happiness.

I think I've believed most of my life that everyone else has had the guidelines to "how it's supposed to be done" but me. Therefore I always looked to those who seemed more experienced for answers. Answers to: How to be happy. How to have it all. How to gain respect. How to be focused but fun. How to find love. How to be successful. But I've learned....no one has the answers written out. We are all struggling to figure it out as we go, and we hope we can make it look like we've already got it figured out, while doing so. We hide our ugly truths of failures behind surrogate remarks of "I'm fine", but truth is there is no one size fits all. Everything is unique and works differently for different circumstances. ​
So this year, no more turning to people to get permission to make my own decisions. No more "should I color my hair...should I go on a date with him...should I forgive this?" I'm walking in my brilliance and I'm not going to second guess it. Not anymore.