Who are you trying to please?
“What do you want to do when you grow up?”
Who hasn’t been asked that question before at some point in their childhood? When we are first asked that question, we tell them only based on what we know – policeman, fireman, pilot, teacher but as we get older the pressure mounds as we conform to the expectations of society and ourselves.
Some of us will be pressured by our parents, friends, or peers to go down similar paths that they have gone down whilst others are determined to do the opposite. Many of us feel pressured to figure things out quickly whilst others are given time to develop. Since I was young I never really knew what I wanted. As a young kid I struggled with learning. Reading, writing and math’s never came easy for me. School in general was not easy for me. Place in the lower graded classes and extra learning classes meant that I was separated from my friends and really had to figure out how to learn. I put a massive emphasis on that and with the help of my parents built strategies on how to over come it. Never was I to be a perfect student but I was determined to never give up.
Later I took up classes such as economics and legal studies with the intention of becoming a lawyer. At this point I thought that the only way to make money was to be in the corporate world and that I HAD to go to university to achieve it. I found these subjects really difficult and unenjoyable. At the same time I was studying Food Technology which incorporated nutrition, food based business models and recipe creation. I thrived!! I was totally in my element and no one could keep up with the work load that I would put into my studies. I would stay up till 3am working on assignments not because I needed to but I wanted toI finished school and thought I HAD to attend university. It wouldn’t be right if I didn’t go. My expectations was that I would go and do something in economics as I was told that would bring in the most amount of money and get a job. I hated every minute of it. I started working in the corporate world and from the get go I hated it. I loved that I fitted in with the rest of society, I loved that I had something to complain about like everyone else but reality was definitely not meeting my expectation.
For such a long period of time I had placed such high expectations on myself and others to help me achieve my goals and dreams. Every time that happened it drove me further away from what I truly ever wanted to do. I thought that degrees and qualifications were going to define me and that pleasing my loved ones and doing the things that they never got to do such as working in the corporate world was going to be inspiring for me and uplifting. It wasn’t until I stripped back to raw basics did I truly understand what was important to me. It wasn’t until I let go of trying to please everyone else around me did I finally understand where I was going. You see we can go around in circles in this world. It’s so easy to. We get swept up in things we think is important and get blinded to who we truly are. We try to keep up to status, style, success and we all want it Yesterday. We forget to truly enjoy the journey and stop and take a breathe and realize the beauty in the attempt.
When I stopped the feeling of betrayal from the world my heart finally clicked and opened up. I knew that working in an environment to just please everyone else just wasn’t going to cut it. I looked back on my life and thought about what was always constant within it and what was it demonstrating. From rummaging through my grandmothers fridge to helping her cook and having her teach me, to food technology to getting an agriculture degree and then working in the food industry. Combining that with my own health struggles and achieving that through food and mindset I decided that I loved that more and wanted to help other people with that more.
Life isn’t about making other people happy or pleasing them. Life isn’t about doing the norm. Life is about breaking the boxes that our family, friends, society place upon us and going out and achieving greatness. Life is about breaking the boundaries because once you do you grow to levels that you never thought possible. When you believe in yourself you won’t need outside motivation to do things, you just do it. Yes you may lose some friends along the way but you will gain new ones that bring you inspiration and help you along your journey. And remember, life doesn’t have to be a sprint race to the finish. Enjoy the marathon, take breaks if you need to and figure out the direction you want to take for yourself and what’s going to get you out of bed to do the things that you want to do the most.