Why are you where you are?

Our parents say it to us all the time as we  are growing up. Its in movies and books everywhere. They say it in most commencement speeches. You can be anything you want to be. You can go anywhere you want to go. You can do anything you want to do. The sky is the limit, anything you set your mind to you can accomplish.

Those words aren't just empty platitudes. They are truth itself. Yet, how many of us are who we really want to be, are where we want to be and do what it is that we want to do? Very few, if any. There lies before us a world of infinite possibilities, countless open doors. Why do we not simply walk through them and change our lives forever, for the better?

Most of our lives are filled with other people's junk. Things that we really have no interest in and really don't know what to do with. There are the desires of our parents, pushing us towards the lives they either have or weren't able to have. There's our well meaning but often misinformed friends guiding us towards their idea of a perfect life. Teachers, guidance counselors, other family members all telling us what we should do and filling our lives with the things that they want for us. Many of those things aren't ever going to work for us, even though they come with the greatest love and best intentions. But, from the ideas that will work for us why can't we cobble together the perfect life from the bits and pieces of all the things they shove our way?

We try. We take the parts that seem like good ideas and we make them part of our life, but more often than not we aren't happy with the results. Why is this? Each of these people that love and care about us are sharing with us their vision of who we are and who we could be. The ideas and things that they suggest would work better if we were exactly who they envisioned. But we are not the people that our friends and family see us as. It simply isn't possible, because no two people see us exactly the same way

If we know thirty different people there are thirty different points of view on who and what we are. Piecing together a life from these different ideas would be like taking thirty different clips from thirty different movies about thirty different people and attempting to make one two hour movie out of the clips. It's probably doable it just wouldn't make any sense.

Some of the ideas and thoughts that our loved ones have of us are mutually exclusive, they can't exist within the same person. Some are ways that we could be but aren't. Others are things that at one time were true but aren't anymore.

So how do we get to be who it is that we want to be, live where we want to live and do what we want to do? There are clues in some sayings and cliches that have been around for centuries. Fortune favors the bold. God helps those who help themselves. The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm.

That's right. It isn't for anyone else to tell you what you want or what it is going to take to get it. In order to get what you want out of life, you get to decide, who you want to be, where you want to go, and what you want to do. Have a clear vision of exactly what your life will look like when these things are a part of your life. Search your life from the bottom up and discard all the thoughts, feelings and ideas that are holding you back, no matter who or where they come from. 

You are where you are either because it is where you have decided to be or because it is where you let others decide for you to be. Take back the reins. Direct the movie you want to see. It is only your vision that can get you where you want to be, only your plans, ideas and work that will make it happen.