Only you can judge you

Too often we get lost in what others think about us. But you want to know something? Their opinions don't matter! If they hate, let em hate! In the words of bae aka my future girlfriend aka my future wife aka Taylor Swift, "Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake. Shake it off, I shake it off."

There is only one person whose opinion matters. And that's yours. You are the only one walking in your shoes, you're the only one with your mind, your heart, and your soul. So don't let somebody else tell you how you should live your life. Don't let someone tell you what you need to be doing, what you need to be pursuing, or who you need to become. Because, in the end, when you lie down in bed at night, the only one who has to live with the person you have become, is you. No one else. It's just you in that mind of yours. 

It is your life, not theirs. You need to live it, not them.

Let's put it into this perspective. Imagine your dream is to become an actor. It is your passion, it is the only thing in life that makes you feel truly free and truly happy. You are in every school and local play that you can possibly be in. You are good, you are great. College comes around and, naturally, you want to go to school to pursue acting. But your parents are constantly telling you how hard it is to make it in that industry, maybe you should study something with more security. Your teachers tell you that it is too risky of an industry. All of your friends around you are going to school for accounting, engineering, to become a doctor, to become a lawyer. And they all tell you, "do something with more security."

So you do.

You go to school for 4 years studying accounting. You finish all of your schooling, take all your tests, work internship after internship, lock up a full time job, climb up the ladder, and now work a "secure" job making 6 figures. Your family is proud of you, your friends are also out working their white collar jobs, and your life is exactly how they tell you it should be.

But, in the back of your mind, you think, "What if? What if I pursued acting? Where could I be? What could I have done? Who could I have become?" Your mind and body and soul begin to overflow with regret. You may be living the life that you were always told to live, but you are miserable.

Your parents are happy that you are making money. Your friends are happy that you are living in security. And their lives move on, as they always would. 

It's only you that has to live with that numbing feeling of "what if?" That deafening regret that fills your veins. The wonders that keep you up late at night. Only YOU have to deal with it. Nobody else.

My point is, you need to make your own decisions. You need to follow your own passions, your own dreams. You need to live your own life. Because, at the end of the day, the only one it truly effects is you.

It doesn't matter what they think of you or what they say about you. Let em judge, let em hate. At the end of the day, only you can judge you.

Follow your dreams. Live your own life.

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