I am going to tell you something that might sound a little crazy, but hear me out. This is your life and no one else’s. Not your friends, not your parents, not your significant others and so on.

What I am trying to say that since this is your life you need to be living it for yourself and doing what you want. It is so easy to get wrapped up in making everyone around you happy that you start to forget to do what makes you happy.

You cannot let people control you or your emotions. When you do that you give them all your power. One of your biggest powers is the ability to make yourself happy. The fastest way to be miserable is to depend all your happiness on other people or things. The only person who can truly make you happy is yourself. Of course, other people can make you happy. Anyone close in your life should make you happy, but at the end of the day when it is just you and you forgot how to make yourself happy, then what?

We all need people in our life and good people. To guide us, shape us, help us grow into the person we are meant to become. Just remember to not let everyone in your life become a factor in every decision you make for your life. It takes really brave people to take a look at their life and not like how things are and have the courage to start all over again and change it. You’re not a tree if you want to move, then move! Want to travel? Go see the world! You want to start that weird new hobby no one understands then go! Do not stop doing what makes your heart happy.

It is so easy to just do what other people think you should do or advise you to do, but remember they do not have to live with your decision, you do. Do not move to a state you would never move to because your boyfriend misses you too much and cannot see it working long distance anymore. No, Screw that!

Do not major in something you hate just to make your parents happy. They are not the ones that have to go to school and eventually get a job in that profession.

I know sometimes it may seem easier and worth it to just make the ones around us happy because their happiness is our happiness right? Well, yes to a certain degree. Are you really truly happy if you’re not doing exactly what you want to do in life? I myself would have to say no. The scary truth is if you are focusing everything on making everyone else happy you’re eventually going to forget what actually makes you happy and become a shell of a person.

Someone asks you something you’re uncomfortable answering, you do not have to answer them. You really hate that coffee your coworker thinks you love because you didn’t have the heart to say you didn’t stop acting like you like it.

Keep dreaming and dream and dream and dream. Also, make those dreams come true! Take pictures of everything! Document your life and remember when to put the phone away to live in the moment. Start checking things off that bucket list that you keep saying next year too or when you have more money. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. At the very end of your life, you’re going to be the only one there to remember everything you did and did not do. Nothing is worse in life than regret. So make sure everything is something you can look back and be happy about. Because eventually one day it will be too late to live your life for just you.