Do you like
this article?
We send out articles like this one in our free weekly newsletter. The newsletter is written to motivate, inspire, educate, and entertain you.
To sign up, send us an email to Subscribe@TomorrowsEdge.net with the words "free motivational newsletter" in the subject line. We will be happy to add you to the list.
answers these questions
and more
Please tell your friends about our website...
The Next 50 Years
Ten days after my daughter turns 18, my mother will turn 60. And two days after
that, I will be 43. Neither my mother, nor my daughter ever thinks about things
like personal growth and self-
When I look back at 18 and remember myself in my daughter's shoes, I see someone so very different from who I am now, but also I see the current me fighting to find her way to the surface. I thought that if I were perfect and successful by other people's standards, then I would earn the right to be whatever or whomever I chose to become. Really rich, successful, smart, or beautiful people get to do crazy daring things. They get to act out, speak out, be spontaneous, funny, and they get to dress however they like regardless of fashion. I thought of people like Elton John, Madonna, Prince, Howard Hughes, Albert Einstein, and my neighbor the successful attorney who could wear the shabby yard work clothing while driving around in his Corvette to the store, because he was rich enough to not give a darn what others through of him. The lesson my young mind came away with was that you have to earn the right to be outrageous and to not have to cave in to society's ideas of what is "normal" and "acceptable" behavior.
By the time I was 25, I had come to realize, with the help of just about everyone I knew, that I was a failure at being "normal" and "acceptable." I was rebellious and kept arguing that the choices I had made were logical, compassionate, and well thought out. I had not done the unpopular things of my youth to simply be rebellious. I had done them in moments of great clarity and with conviction that in the moment they were the right choices for me. Looking back, I still agree with that younger version of me and I do not regret the choices I made.
In my late twenties, I came to a point in my personal development when I realized
that so much of what I did not like about myself was created as a reaction to the
adults in my life who had played the roles of parents, teachers, bosses, and mentors.
In analyzing my relationships from a psychology and self-
The answer came in one of those moments of clarity that creates a pivotal change in one's life story. I asked myself a simple question, "Who would you have been, if your parents and all of the adults in your life had raised you correctly? If they had done everything perfectly with regards to raising you and you had therefore lived up to your full potential, your whole and real self, who would you be?" And as I sat there imagining a version of me that was brave enough and confident enough to laugh aloud, to sing and dance at whim, to dress ridiculously out of style at times, to succeed at what I felt like succeeding at and to ignore those false ideals that everyone else set for me. As I saw this happy, goofy, eccentric version of my ideal "real" self in my mind's eye, I asked myself another question. "You will probably life for another 40, 50, maybe 60 more years. Will you stay this version of you that they created, or will you live as that version of you that has been fighting to come out all along? Who will you be for the next fifty years?" And in that moment, without debate, without guilt, without fear of retribution, and without an ounce of care about what others might think, I gave myself permission to be the version of me that I would have been, had nothing bad, ugly, sad, depressing, frightening, or heartbreaking ever happened to me.
I found that it was actually so much easier to be me than it ever had been to be
what everyone else said I should be. People did not suddenly fall in love with me.
They did not suddenly like me better. They did not seem to notice nor care that
I had undergone such a revolutionary life-
Now, when I imagine myself turning 60, being my mother's age, I imagine I will be just a bit more rebellious, softer, and wrinkled. Mostly, I just see me being me.
For those of you who that feel as if people and circumstances stopped you from becoming your authentic real self, stopped you from living up to your full potential, stopped you from living a life of joy... I highly recommend asking yourself the same questions... "Who would you be if your life had been perfect and you were never wounded? And who will you be for the next 50 years now that you are aware of the difference between who you are and who you could have been, should have been, would have been if life had been good to you?" Then get on with being so very "you." It is easier than you might think.
Please help us to spread the word about
our website. Email this article to a friend,
bookmark it, or “like” it on Facebook. Just
click on the “share” button at the top of
the page for a list of ideas for how to
share this article with your loved ones.