Live Your Life, Not Someone Else's

Have you heard this statement? As strange as it sounds, I think living your own life - rather than someone else's - is difficult to do. For instance, many of us have role models, right? We think they're awesome and we want their skills and talents. The people we look up to have already carved paths for themselves and we want to follow them. Some of us think, "If I work hard enough, I can be just like them."

The sad and happy truth, though, is that we're not exactly like our role models. We have slightly different skills and interests than anyone else who has come before us, even if we have many things in common. Living my own life has been a struggle for me, personally. I have many role models and I want to do all that they do. However, as much as I want to be a world finalist dancer and focus all my time on it, I'm accepting that I have a pull toward writing and other interests, and I would rather spend a few hours of my day doing those instead. It's difficult to accept what I am not sometimes. I wonder if I'm actually giving up on my dreams. Yet when I do accept myself for what I am and what I have, I feel free. I lift my own pressures to achieve the same accomplishments as someone else. I find inspiration by doing something different and the world seems to open up before me into possibilities.

Until recently, I've failed to see that my idea of success is actually the accomplisment of someone else - his/her success is the product of his/her own experiences, talents, and skills. That person's life is only a guideline for me...it's not my end result; it's not my success. I realize that there are many things I may not be nor achieve, and I probably won't achieve what my role models have done. It's difficult to swallow that sometimes, and it makes me sad. Yet I also realize that greatness comes through creating my own path, made up of what I love, what I'm good at, and what I care to pursue. It's undefined at the moment and I don't know what it looks like, but I have a feeling that if I ride out the unknown and be persistant in what I want, my success will manifest itself brilliantly. That's the hope anyway :).