TESS CARCALDI

The other day, I was about to make a life decision when this thought suddenly entered my mind: Should I tell so-and-so first that I’m going to do this?

Immediately, I mentally slapped myself and re-thought, Absolutely not!

It’s hard to make decisions without thinking about how other people might react. What will they say? What will they do? We fear we will anger or upset others with our decisions.

But at what expense? Our own happiness.

We were given one life to live. One life to make our own. One life to live on our own terms. To choose the path we want our life to take. If we are living by the terms of everyone else, then we aren’t really living our own lives. That’s just called existing.

When we make a decision, that’s our own decision to make. It’s a decision we make based on our own lives and what would be best for us. Those who truly love us will always support the decisions that will bring us happiness, success, and prosperity. If you’re constantly worrying about what someone might say about a decision you’re going to make, then maybe it’s not the decisions that you should be re-evaluating.

Of course, there are decisions that will blatantly harm us if we choose them. But most of the time, those decisions are obvious.

In short, we don’t need permission to live our lives. The only person who needs to give us permission is us (unless, of course, you’re still under eighteen, but that’s a blog post for another day).

Here’s to living on our own terms and to continuing to mentally slap ourselves when we forget we don’t need permission to live our lives until we never question ourselves again.