Are you one of those people who tells yourself that you left it too late? The ship that held your dreams has sailed. You are all out of second chances to live the life you always wanted and now you just have to suck it up and see out your days as best you can. If you are, you are most definitely not alone.
Even if you don’t see yourself that way, I’m willing to bet that, in secret moments, thoughts not too far from those I just mentioned float across your mind. Maybe you are good at seeing them off now, but trust me, there looms a day when seeing them off will no longer work.
Which is why I want to get one thing straight. Hear me when I say this, because I get that it really may feel like you are backed into a corner with nowhere left to go, but those beliefs are flat out wrong. You have not left it too late. The ship full of your dreams has not sailed. There is always another chance, and you never have to ‘suck it up and see out your days’. Never.
Don’t believe me? Thinking ‘that’s all well and good for you to say, Andy, but you aren’t me. You didn’t make the decisions or mistakes I made’?
Well, you don’t have to believe me. And yes, on one level, you’d be right: I am not you; I haven’t lived your life; but I have lived my life. And you and me—we aren’t so different.
The thing that makes us similar is this: no matter how many bad decisions you make, how many mistakes you find yourself in the middle of, or what challenges you face, there is always a choice.
No matter how bad it gets for you, or for me, in every situation, we have a choice. A choice to respond with resignation, or to rise up and grasp opportunity. A choice to throw in the towel, or to find another way. A choice to settle, or to live.
And you always have more choices than you think. The choice to settle or live, to submit or rise up, to give up or find another way: those aren’t simple either-or decisions. They are choices rich with nuance, overflowing with possibility: choices that meet you right where you are and carry you one step closer to where you want to be.
Some of those choices will be tough. They may push back the boundaries of what feels do-able. They may move you further outside your comfort zone than you ever intended to go. They may bring immediate results, or they may take time to manifest. But no matter what they entail, those choices remain.
Here’s the bottom line: the choice you make is yours, and yours alone. The way things turn out—that’s on you, no one else.
I’ve made choices, some good and some not so good. I’ve even tried to placate my sense of failure by convincing myself that my flawed decisions were the product of ‘having no choice’. But that’s not true. I always had a choice. I may not have liked the choices, but I had them all the same.
That’s why it’s so important that you figure out who the real you is; because, when the choices you make line up with the person you really are, no amount of tough decisions or struggle is too much.
And that, in a nutshell—the fact that figuring out who the real you is makes all the difference between truly living and merely existing—is why I’ve spent the last twenty-five years not just pursuing my own adventure, but helping others do the same.
