Hey, y'all! I'm very sorry that this post is late, but my family and I have been on Fall Break touring the Blue Ridge Parkway through NC and up through VA and various colleges along the way. Pictures are most definitely on their way in a future post! But today, I wanted to respond to a post I read by one of my favorite bloggers, Carly of The College Prepster, that she entitled "Ownership."
In her post, Carly outlined the underlying change that she has worked her whole life to achieve: ownership of her life, character, and actions. She acknowledges that this has not been a quick process and identifies becoming her own boss as one of the largest milestones towards her goal. I was so inspired after reading how she's been able to accomplish such great things being a few years out of college. But seeing as I'm still in high school, I wanted to talk about how one can still gain some ownership over his or her life while still living with parents, friends, teachers, etc. who all want to give you their 50 cents about how you should live your life.
1 // Figure out what you think for yourself, and express it with confidence and respect.
While you're in high school, it's easy to feel smothered by
overbearing, excuse me,
informative adults who want you to act as they please. While I am
certainly not encouraging you to enter a full-on rebellion phase, I do think that it is imperative for us as students to formulate our own stances on our futures (collegiate, career, and familial), today's "hot topics," and the role of government in citizens' daily lives.* Once establishing these opinions, it is important to stand by them in a respectful manner. Nobody likes someone who militantly enforces their views onto others, so keep that in mind!
*These are the three essentials, in my opinion, that every person needs to be well-informed about in order to have some ownership of his or her life!!
2 // Setting your own goals and seeing them through!
High school is formulated in order to encourage students to "stick to the status quo" (anyone catch the High School Musical reference...cheesy I know! ;). Therefore, it can be very easy to get swept into the masses of people doing the bare minimum to just "get by." I encourage all students to strive to excel to the best of his or her ability. Whether that means getting the lead in the school play, participating in a team sport for the first time, or getting a good grade in that tough math class, endeavoring to do your best in high school sets a precedent for your collegiate and professional careers down the road. If you prove yourself to be committed to a cause about which you are passionate, your reputation as a hard worker will open doors for you in the future. Also, the feeling of accomplishing your goals is so satisfying, and it will boost your self-esteem and confidence in your ability to gain ownership of your life.
3 // Being flexible when pursuing goals!!
Now, all of this talk about making elaborate plans and being completely invested in everything you do sounds great in theory, but not all of your plans are going to be executed flawlessly. Especially when they involve other people, plans can tend to get off-schdule, messy, and even scrapped completely. Events that happen along the way may make your reconsider and even redefine the direction in which you want your life to take, and following that, your all-important goal may not be on your radar anymore. It is important to have the vision to see something through from start to finish, but you also must be able to work around obstacles that are placed in your way, get back up when you've been knocked down (because it
will happen!!), and have the tenacity and ingenuity to be able to alter your goal if it doesn't work out or is no longer relevant to how you want to life your life.
4 // Giving recognition to the changes you've made!
The path to ownership of your life is guaranteed to bring you stress and frustration because not everything will go your way. So, from time to time, looking back at your own accomplishments validates the perseverance you used to make change and provides you with inspiration to continue to work hard towards your dreams!
"In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility." -Eleanor Roosevelt
. . .
I know that in today's society, there is so much pressure to fit into the mold of a perfect student, son/daughter, role model, etc. I hope that this post reminds you to take ownership of whoever
you want to be in life! Tell me in the comments what steps, big or small, that you're going to take in order to gain some ownership over your life. Thanks so much for taking time to read today's blog post, and I hope that each of you has a marvelous day!
love, p&p
P.S. Here are some promo codes for the P & P readers who made it to the very bottom of this post!
