When Life Pushes You in Another Direction

Do you ever have those moments where you think you have everything planned out? You feel as though your future is set, and all you need to do is follow a map you created in your mind (or even wrote down if you're that passionate about life-planning). You've planned when you're gonna graduate from college, when you're gonna get married, where you're going to live and work. Heck, you might already be planning a future with someone you just had eye contact with, but that's on an entirely different level.

And then the smallest thing changes, but it destroys all your plans completely. If there was a visual representation of it, it would look like this: papers filled with your plans, shredded, then thrown into a blazing pit, and then you coming after those papers, eventually falling into the fiery pit as well.

What a glorious ending.

An ending. That's what it might seem to you at first. Now what are you going to do? Your life is over. You're never going to stomp around in your own office like Miranda Priestly. You're going to be another failure. Another doused out dream.

Oh please, sweetie. I'm going to save you from the "when one door closes, another opens" inspirational talk and hit you hard with this: Stop overreacting. The difference between those who succeed and those who don't is that successful people kick failure and disappointment in the balls and don't waste time whining and acting like victims.

So what if you need to take a U-turn in life? This may sound harsh, but you aren't dead, so you can still do something about it. Always be ready for endless possibilities, even the ones that seem horrible to you. Be aware that you could get rejected by your dream company, not get into the university you've been dreaming of going to since kindergarten, or have to move away. You've lived long enough to understand that life isn't fair and is going to mess with you as much as it can. Keep those possibilities in mind and when they happen, adapt. Go with the changes or push back.

You will take unwanted turns and even get stuck there for ages, but it'll be up to you to steer yourself back in the direction that you want. But, the direction that you want now may not be the direction that you want in the end. Things will happen to you. You will change, meet people, get hurt, and learn about the world, and all these experiences are enough to burn old interests and replace them with new passions.

Planning isn't bad. Planning too much is. Of course we all wanna succeed and live our best lives, and setting goals is essential to achieving that, yada-yada. The trick here is to plan the ending, the ultimate goal, and leave space for spontaneity during the journey toward getting there.

I'm a firm believer in the "everything happens for a reason" view combined with the "what's meant to be will be" mindset. It means that you're destined to be somewhere that you actually would love to be, and that life will throw shit at you to help you get there just in case you're being stubborn.

So just take it and trust that you'll end up where you're meant to be.