Rewriting your life’s rules

"Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be."

Shonda Rhimes

This is a very special guest post from your mom:

My whole life I have tried to play by the rules of a game that somebody else has written for me. In doing so, I was told, you will achieve success. But the part I never understood was what if success isn't necessarily the same for everyone. What if it happens to look differently for me then it does for the person sitting next to me. We are all told to follow the same rules but yet are we all playing the same game? 

In spite of my reservations, this game was all I knew and so I relentlessly pursued this idea of being just like everybody else. Of defining myself by external factors that were set out for me.  I thought if I acted a certain way, dressed a certain way, and valued certain things, I would be just like everyone else and I would be happy.

Yet somehow I always felt myself falling short of reaching goals that were set out for me by others. And I struggled with confusion and frustration. It looked so easy for everyone else, why wasn't it so easy for me? 

As I grew older, an extraordinary thing happened, I learned how to play the game. Suddenly I was wearing the right clothes, I knew just the right thing to say, and I could honestly say I was "winning" at this game I had struggled my whole life to play. I was busy being exactly who I was supposed to be (and having a lot of fun doing it) yet I wasn't being me. 
And for the first time I realized it wasn't that I couldn't win at this game, it was just that I didn't want to. So I had a choice, I could continue to exhaust myself trying to fit into this definition of who other people thought I should be, or I could let it all go and not just write my own rules, but redefine the game. 

You will have so many people in your life who want to define you and who will feel uncomfortable with the fact that you don't neatly fit into one box or another and I know this will not be easy. But while I was taught that there is only one path to follow, your dad and I believe that there are multiple paths that you can choose. 

We believe that there are many different roads that can each lead to happiness, success and fulfillment but nobody can choose that path for you.

If I could only teach you one lesson, it would be don't let other people define who you are. Everybody has a different idea of what is right or wrong based on their own personality, culture, race, religion, economic status, and family background. Don't spend precious time and energy worrying about whether or not you are living up to somebody else's idea of what life is supposed to be. Figure out who you want to be and strive to become the best version of yourself. And no matter what you decide (and even if we don't always agree) your dad and I will support you, stand by you, and love you no matter what.