Michael Dobrinski

You Owe It To Yourself To Do What Makes You Happy

The sad reality about life is that nobody will tell or teach you how to live your own. 

Nobody will teach you when you should leave someone when the person or the people you’re with no longer serve you. Nobody’s going to tell you that it’s time to listen to yourself and stop making yourself small. Nobody’s going to teach you that your truth is much more important and valuable than what society thinks or expects. But as time goes by and you reach the point where you can no longer take and carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, soon you learn that to walk away from all of it and just leave everything behind is the best thing you can ever give to yourself. You realize that it’s okay for the people who you think should love and support you don’t see and understand the choices, changes, and growth that your soul needs; that it’s okay for the people holding you back to no longer be in or be a part of your life anymore. Because what’s worse with staying with the people who don’t support you is the feeling of being trapped, forcing yourself to hush down when all you ever wanted to do is live. Yes, live. 

Most of us were taught that our biological family is our only family. But the truth is, sometimes it doesn’t have to be. The only struggle here is that making the choice to once and for all leave your biological family will probably be one of the hardest things you ever have to do—for yourself, for your own sake. And although this specific idea is taboo to a lot of countries or to most cultures and families in general, that itself should not prevent you from making your own choices. Nobody tells us this since, naturally, humans are social creatures, but we don’t have to let our family backgrounds, cultures, and traditions define us and even dictate or control the way we want to live ours. Just because the older generations struggled the way they’ve struggled before and had endured them doesn’t mean that we have to suffer and experience the same things that they did. All we can do about their experiences is to educate ourselves as much as possible and learn from them. 

So when one day you wake up and the universe is giving you signs that it’s time to leave, don’t ignore it. Because when you listen—I mean truly listen—to your intuition and the deep needs of your soul, someday you will see it as a blessing. Because it is God’s and/or the universe’s way of protecting you. 

And one day, when you truly are in a good place—mind, body, heart, and soul—and you look back from all those experiences to where you are now, you will think back and realize everything you have gone through was worth it. Because it made you stronger, wiser, and better. One day, you will see yourself in a much different light compared to the way you see yourself now, and you will thank yourself because you chose to hold on. And that sometimes, choosing and making your own path that deeply aligns with your truth, including how you want to live the rest of your days and how you want to leave and be remembered by the things that matter to you, is okay. Society may tell and convince us that it’s not. But sometimes, different is good. Change can be good. We just need to be brave enough to explore with an open mind.