The best piece of life advice I could ever give anyone is this: Follow your own path. I will admit that doing so isn’t always easy. In our society, we tend to have a cookie cutter view of what constitutes success.
For example, society says that successful people make a lot of money. They are happily married and have more than one child. And they live in big houses and drive expensive cars.
The problem with that view of success is that it doesn’t constitute a successful life for everyone. Lots of people simply don’t fit into the “two parents, three kids, big house in the suburbs” mold. Worse yet, that definition leads many people to make big life mistakes.
How many folks get married simply because that is what society expects? Then they find out that they aren’t suited for marriage, and their marriages are a disaster. Consider how many people have children when they don’t have the desire (or the disposition) to raise kids. They then end up being crummy parents who send unhappy people out into the world.
It takes courage to follow your own path and ignore society’s definition of success. But if you want to be truly happy in life, you have to stop worrying about what other people think. Instead, you need to be confident in your own life choices.
The good news is that if you follow your own path, you will find that your life suddenly flows. That is because you aren’t trying to achieve what society tells you to achieve. Instead, you’ll be living your life in a way that matches your personality and skills. In short, you will be living an authentic life.
Below are ways to figure out how to follow your own path. If you follow these approaches, you will live the life that you were meant to live, and you’ll be more happy than you ever imagined.
Learn to Ignore the Opinions of Others
The most important skill that you need to master when following your own path is to be able to ignore the opinions of others. You cannot follow your own path if you are worrying about what other people think of you. The positive or negative feedback of others needs to become unimportant to you, if you want to live an authentic life.
In my younger years, I struggled to learn this skill. I remember being in my 20s, and by all accounts, I was reasonably successful. By age 25, I had a college degree and a law degree. After graduating I got a decent job (nothing fancy) and my own apartment (again, nothing fancy). I was physically fit, well-dressed and kind.
However, I wasn’t married. And since my peers believed that being married was the true mark of success, notwithstanding my other accomplishments, I thought I was a failure. It was complete nonsense, and unfortunately, I bought into that nonsense.
So, instead of spending my 20s being proud of my accomplishments, and enjoying the freedom of being single and childless, I fretted over the one thing that I didn’t have – a marriage. How regrettable.
Now that I am over 50, I have a wiser perspective on what society deems to constitute success. So, today I can say that marriage is nice – when it is a good marriage. A bad marriage is a nightmare. Similarly, being a mother is nice. But it is also a lot of hard work. And having a comfortable home to live in and a good car to drive both are nice. But when you own a fancy home and a nice car, you are under financial pressure to pay for those things.
In my twenties, I didn’t get the pros and cons of all that. Instead, I was far too worried about the opinions of others. And I wanted to be successful by society’s standards.
So, I know all too well that if you are going to follow your own path, you need to stop worrying about what other people think. You have to decide what success means to you. And then pursue it! And if other people think you are successful, or they think you are a failure, who cares? Instead, learn to be happy with yourself and love the life that you have created.
To Follow Your Own Path, Know Your Life Purpose
To follow your own path, you need to know yourself, and what your life purpose is. Realize that your purpose may not be to have two kids and own a three-bedroom house. Your destiny may be to affect the world in a more far-reaching way.
Consider what our world would be like if Jane Goodall had chosen to get married, raise three kids and live in a flat in London, rather than go to Gombe National Park to study the chimpanzees? What if Mother Teresa had decided to live in Italy and have a traditional married lifestyle, instead of going to India to found the Sisters of Charity? Both women chose to deviate from society’s standards of success, and in doing so, they achieved great things and blessed our world.
So, part of following your own path is knowing your life purpose. That requires you to figure out where your passions lie. What do you love to do? You also need to know where your natural talents lie. When you figure out those two things, you’ll have a good idea of what path you should choose. Then, you simply need to be brave enough to follow that path.
(To read more about discovering your life purpose, click here.)
Find Folks Who Support You
Not everyone is going to support your desire to follow your own path. There are lots of people for whom society’s cookie cutter mold of success is gospel. Success for them consists solely a heterosexual couple who gets married, has 3 children and buys a house in the suburbs. Just look at your Facebook feed, and you’ll see that most folks fetishize this notion of success.
But success isn’t about accomplishing what society considers to be success. True success is about finding your destiny and fulfilling it.
Know that there are people who will support you in this quest. Find them! Usually, they will be people with a little bit of life experience under their belts. That is because the older most of us get, the more we realize that every life is unique. And every person has something different to offer the world.
You may seek out support from folks who are actually living the life that you desire. They may even work in your dream job. Find them and use them to inspire you!
Following your own path is hard. It may mean ignoring what your friends and family say is important, and listening to that still small voice. Now, that voice may very well tell you, “Get married! Have two kids! You will be a wonderful spouse and parent.” Or that voice may tell you, “There are poor, vulnerable children on the other side of the world. They need you.” Alternatively, that voice may tell you, “I know that your job isn’t the highest paying, or the most prestigious. But at that job will enable you to help others in ways that you cannot imagine.”
In short, don’t listen to society. Forget about the messages sent by television commercials, friends or family as to what constitutes the successful life. Instead, figure out what you are meant to do with this one life that you have been given. Then be brave, and follow your own path.
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