What do you enjoy?

Somewhere at an early age, I learned that success means being impressive, and being impressive often means neglecting your own wants and needs.

I'm sure I absorbed this from a lot of places. While my parents always told me they wanted me to do something that made me happy, I constantly watched them neglect their own happiness and health to pay the mortgage and put food on the table. Church was where I learned there was a moral "right" or "wrong" to every action and that even the people who were supposed to be like family to me were watching to see if I would make a mistake. And the school system was going through its transformation to push kids to take the most aggressive class load they could to be more competitive when applying to college. At the local public school, anyone who wasn't in all honors or AP classes was essentially ignored by counsellors and advisors – and so my sister and I went to private school where the expectations were even higher.

So yes, there were many sources that taught me that all that really mattered was external validation. But, perhaps even more importantly, I don't remember having conversations with anyone around what I wanted.

Is that a silly thing to say? I don't know. I'm not a parent and I'm not sure if having conversations around what makes a kid happy is highly encouraged or really weird. Maybe my parents even did have these discussions with me and I just don't remember (and even if they didn't, I know they did the best they could).

But just looking back at how much I clung to the approval of others to guide my actions, I can't help but wonder how different my life would be if the biggest lesson I had learned as a kid was to ask myself what I wanted and follow that rather than do what I thought everyone expected of me.

Why does it matter, though? After all, every kid who loves ballet isn't going to grow up to be a professional dancer. Most kids who think monster trucks are cool aren't going to drive anything bigger than a U-Haul later in life. Of all the kids who wanted to be Indiana Jones, how many have even left the country?

It matters because it teaches people to trust themselves.

Right now we have a lot of people in the world who are really great at following rules, meeting expectations, and suffering silently when something feels off. Sometimes these people finally hit a breaking point where they realize something (or a lot of somethings) need to change. Sometimes they can numb themselves enough to muddle through life without ever making any changes. And sometimes they are so scared on the consequences of not meeting expectations that they literally die trying to do the responsible thing.

That last one scares the hell out of me because at one point in my life, that would have been me. I would have been the person just hoping I was having a panic attack, then calling my boss to ask what I should do, then insisting they send a replacement so no one had to go without their meds, then waiting for that replacement when I should have just shut the pharmacy down, called my boss from the ambulance, and asked for forgiveness rather than permission. That is 100% the kind of thing I did when I didn't trust myself.

So learning to trust yourself can do a lot for you, including potentially saving your life one day. And that starts with asking yourself what you enjoy about your life and what you don't and believing yourself, even when your answer doesn't follow the rules and expectations you learned growing up.

Remember, too, that asking yourself that question doesn't mean you need to totally overturn your life, even if the answer you get back is, "I enjoy nothing about my current life." When I finally asked myself that question, my own actions looked something like:

1. Grieve the time I lost
2. Forgive myself for shutting down my real self so hard for so long
3. Rewire a lot of my beliefs around how to operate in the world, make decisions, and spend my time
4. Take small opportunities to say yes when I wanted to say yes and no when I wanted to say no to rebuild trust in myself
5. Eventually build up enough courage to do something like quit a job that wasn't right for me

Take it slow. Build that trust. And see how your life shifts even just a little every time you say yes to yourself.

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