Do you ever feel that people in your life are constantly telling you what you should and shouldn't do?

Do you ever feel that make snap judgments based on their life experience?

Are you tired of keeping your mouth shut when people ask you things like, Why are you still single? What are you plans after graduation? Do you have any plans at all? Are you just going to buy cats and call it quits by 25?

Same old. Same old.

I spent many hours trying to figure out how to get control of my own life. After all, nothing is written in stone, right? But how does one go about freeing themselves from these expectations and start creating their own? It's not an easy process, or at least that is what you will tell yourself.

Change is never easy, but that is why we do it. That's why we make new choices and try and better ourselves. Life wasn't meant to spent living in the same way forever. Honestly that would dreadfully boring. Life was meant to be an experience.

Yet, trying to have control over yours is insanely complicated. No matter how much you love your family and friends, sometimes they won't understand. Or sometimes they try to cast their hopes and dreams on you. So how does one go about telling them you don't want what they want, and to do it in a way that doesn't diminish what they want out of life?

You need to stop being worried about what other people think of your choices, emotions, and thoughts. If you are constantly censoring yourself, you become a hollow version of who you were meant to be. That is a cruel way to treat yourself. It's not fair. Instead, you need to stand up for yourself and your thoughts.

You don't have to be mean to others. Just because they want a kind of life, doesn't mean they are wrong. Wanting something different doesn't make you wrong either. You are both 100 percent correct in your own life.

About a year ago, I had some people get mad at me when I said that being single was not about the lack of a relationship, but instead the abundance of oneself. At first, one of them said that she was tired of people diminishing other people relationships and praising only single people. To which we had a conversation and it was explained that we both are right in our lives. Her relationship was good, and my absence of one was also good.

But the other person made me think critically about what I want from life. She came out of nowhere telling me I was such a liar for saying what I said, because it was obvious I really wanted a relationship, and it was irritating to her.

I will never understand that day, or the need to be mean to someone you don't know. Then, and still now (not to mention the last four, almost five years of my life) have found my self not in want of a man. There is the conception that I am lying to everyone and myself. So this is what I have done.

I am confident in my choices, I make them for me, and only me.

I follow my gut in all matters. If it feels wrong then I don't do it. Simple.

I listen to others that are important to me, but make the decision myself in the end.

I love myself first, and treat myself kindly.

I wear what makes me confident regardless of trends.

I try to smile and laugh, even if other people think I'm being weird.

You already have control over your life. That is the secret. You have the power.

You just have to make the choice to use it.