The world wants you to be a certain way.

Everything becomes possible when you stop living up to those expectations and start living true to yourself.

Time for a thread.

The world places expectations on you.

There are expectations on how to act, look, and think. There are expectations around career options, friends, and how to spend money. There are expectations on how to love, what it means to be a good parent, partner, or friend.

Some of these expectations work for you. Others do not. Eventually you must choose to live a life true to yourself or true to the expectations of others.

If you don’t conform and play by the rules, you become the problem. You become ‘abnormal.’

The problem isn’t you.

The problem is the artificial environment that doesn’t allow you to be yourself. The artificial environment is more abnormal than your ability to adapt to it.

You can abandon yourself and try to live up to the unwritten expectations that the world places on you. You’ll never succeed, but at least you’ll always have something to work on.

You can live a lie.

The lies make us unhappy.

We stay in relationships where the love is gone. We work a job we hate. We spend money on things we don’t want or need. We do things out of guilt rather than joy.

All to conform to who the world thinks we should be.

We martyr ourselves with excuses.

‘You’re not supposed to like your job.’
‘A love like the movies doesn’t exist.’
‘I should go to this party even thought I don’t want to because …’
‘My kids won’t be ok if I leave.’

We have been conditioned to prove our worth by enduring pain.

We pass this down to our kids and it becomes their normal.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Carl Jung said: “The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parents.”

You can stop pretending ...

You don’t have to work at a job you hate.
You don’t have to stay in a loveless relationship.
You don’t have to do things out of guilt.

And start living.

You can choose to live a life true to yourself.

You can model what it means to be a person who lives and doesn’t just exist.

Exceptional things happen when you stop limiting yourself with the reality others create for you.

You can save yourself.