Hey guys, I’m back! Sorry for the hiatus, life just got in the way but hopefully I’ll get back to posting more frequently!
Today I had the odd urge to write about something more inspirational and thought why not just do it on a monday when people aren’t feeling so good? haha.
I wanted to talk about something that’s been a challenge for me for a long time and that’s taking risks. I’ve probably been taking risks my whole life (how else would I have gotten to this point in my life if I haven’t?) but have you ever felt like you can’t move away from your comfort zone? It’s hard taking risks and allowing yourself to change what you’re already so used to. In the past couple months when I wasn’t blogging, I literally felt bored with my life, I felt depressed, and I felt like I was missing out on something but I didn’t know what it was. I was going to school, hanging out with friends, doing everything that a “normal” college student would be doing but it just wasn’t enough for me. I remember sitting at work during my lunch break and thinking “I wish something would change”.
It hit me that I was living too much in my comfort zone, I allowed myself to live a boring life and to become a workaholic in order to distract myself from it. The worst part was that I THOUGHT there was nothing I could do to fix it. SO NOT TRUE. Your life is your own, at any given moment you have the choice to change and go on a different path. You don’t need to settle for less. Which brings me to the Seinfeld episode that finally motivated me…haha.
George Constanza has always been one of my favorite characters on Seinfeld due to the reason of how everything seems to go wrong for him. I could relate at the time cause everything was going wrong for me too! I was miserable just like him! Yet in one episode, things started to look up for him when Jerry suggested he do “the opposite”. Instead of George ordering tuna on toast for lunch he went with chicken on rye and instead of shying away from beautiful women, he talked to them. Just like Jerry had said “If every instinct you have is meant to be wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.” I began to wonder can the same be applied to real life?
So I asked myself, “If I could do anything right now, what would I do? What do I really want?” And I was surprised at how many things I could come up with. I wanted excitement, I wanted to experience different things, talk to different people, and be in a place that I actually liked. The complete opposite. Figuring out that I was unhappy changed everything. I decided to take a risk and apply for a college in another state and fulfill my dream of living in a major city. So I did. It wasn’t easy and there was a lot of sleepless nights where I asked myself “What the hell are you doing?!” but I finally took the leap. All of a sudden after I sent out my last college application, it felt like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. And the best part? I felt proud of myself. I knew that this was the beginning of a journey.
The lesson learned is that taking risks is all about ACTION. You can’t just sit there and feel sorry for yourself like George Constanza and I did and expect things to work out. Whatever your fears and anxiety is telling you is not true! The human mind tends to make things appear worse than they really are. Trust me, nothing ever happens the way you think it will. Even if you take a risk and you fail, at least you can look back on your life and not have any regrets.
With this, I’d like to end this post with one of my favorite quotes from the late Nelson Mandela: “There is no passion to be found in playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living”.
Until next time lovelies,
-Ruya
