Sometimes this balancing act called life can throw us completely off-kilter, as it often does to me. It's as if you're walking on a tightrope with ease until suddenly you start to wobble and can barely remember how well you were doing mere seconds ago. Like being thrown off-balance on a tightrope, the bad things tend to overtake the good in our lives as well.

Whenever something in my life starts to go wrong at a time that's supposed to be "good," I become frustrated.

'Why is something like this happening to me during what's supposed to be the best time of my life?' I often ask myself. This has happened to me during so many stages of life, but it happens most often when I have unrealistically high expectations for what my life should look like.

I vividly remember everything I expected college to be: becoming best friends with my roommate, having highly intellectual discussions in my major classes, completing a Public Relations degree, and finding a job right after graduation. 18-year-old me would never guess where we would be today - graduated after 3 years of college and working in ministry. Nothing and I mean nothing, is exactly how I expected it to be when I first walked into my freshman year dorm room. I ended up having arguments with my roommate on the daily that led to spending most of my time in my neighbors' room. My best friend turned out to be my gorgeous neighbor who I didn't think would ever talk to me. I didn't get straight A's, I had three different majors, and the intellectual classroom discussions didn't come until my third year of college. Despite all of the things that I expected college to be, I still survived.

I had all of these expectations as to what my life should look like, and my experience only got better when I learned to free myself from those expectations and let my life play out the way it was intended to.

You see, I thought that things like not getting along with my roommate, changing my major so much, and not having a 4.0 GPA were "bad" things happening in what I imagined as the best years of my life. Even though most people will say college years are supposed to be the best years, they most certainly don't have to be! No one's life is the same, so we're not all going to have the same incredible or horrible college experience.

While we're balancing on life's tightrope, we often think that is the only path; we've seen so many people walk it before that we think we have to follow suit. We see others dancing with ease across the thin wire having the best time of their lives. But not all of us have perfect balance and can walk across such a thin line easily.

Some of us struggle and need to find a different path, and that's more than okay.

Just because the world tells us we need to be doing something or feeling a certain way doesn't mean we have to. Dropping our high expectations can help us live our lives with the freedom to do what's best for us and not just what the world wants us to do.

So, go! Be yourself and remember that you're doing the best for you, and that's all that matters.