Hold onto your seats guys! This one’s a doozy. Pull up a chair, grab your blue light glasses, and pour yourself a cup of coffee.

This is a blog post I’ve been wanting to write for some time now, but have always stopped myself from writing out of fear that it may come across too pessimistic. But after careful consideration, I decided to do it anyway. Partially because I was lucky enough to meet someone who has had a strikingly similar experience as me. And since then I started to think, maybe I’m not the only one who struggles with this issue… Maybe this is something that’s brewing inside of many of us, but we don’t talk about it out of fear that other people will think we’re too negative, overly angry, or overly sensitive. So here it is. 

This is a post that I’ve created to share my life-long struggle with other people’s opinions about how I “should” live my life. I’ll be sharing my experience with overly opinionated people pushing me to live my life according to their values and opinions leading up to WHY this matters. NOT just for me, but for everyone. I dive into this social issue and explore why I believe this is so prevalent in our interactions, how age and gender play into it, and end with a spiritual reason for this tense energy we’re finding in the 21st century. I also share the important takeaways that I believe we need to hear NOW more than ever so that we can all finally live in a world where we’re allowed to break away from the mold and be different! Where we’re allowed to choose a different path, pursue our interests without judgment, and live according to our personal values. Let’s get into it!

My Story 

Here’s what I mean…

The earliest piece of “advice” or rather opinions that I remember getting as a child about how I “should” live was when an estranged family member told me that I shouldn’t study cosmetology and open up a salon someday, even though that was my life-long dream. Instead, he told me that I should marry a rich man from the country club to take care of me. True story. “You’re not going to CUT HAIR!” he said to me. “How are you going to take care of yourself!? How are you going to buy groceries!?”

Fast forward to my most recent example which happened today (the day I started writing this post). I went to Home Goods to make several big purchases like an office chair and a chair for our living room. I must have told the woman at the register 10 times that I DIDN’T want to open up a credit card, but she wouldn’t listen to me. She felt that I needed to have a Home Goods credit card SO BADLY because SHE loves HER Home Goods credit card. Therefore, I should have one too!

She kept calling me “crazy” over and over again for not wanting to open up the credit card and actually wouldn’t let me buy my furniture any other way! Can you believe that?! Never has someone turned away my money at a cash register before! I was trapped at the register and then ganged up on by two female cashiers who refused to run my card to pay for my purchases. For whatever reason, they felt that I needed to have this credit card and wouldn’t listen to me no matter how much I said that I didn’t want one. Finally, I choked back tears at the cash register as I was forced to open up a card I never wanted (without even hearing the “rewards” or “benefits” of a Home Goods card).

For as long as I can remember I’ve been pressured into making certain decisions and hearing people’s so-called “advice” without being respected at all. From the color that I choose to paint my walls, to the dog I get, to the credit cards I open, to the college degree I chose to pursue, I’ve been bulldozed by others. Sometimes it’s the people who are closest to me, and sometimes it’s strangers. 

This is an issue that has plagued me for as long as I can remember. From the time when I was a child, to even today as I go about purchasing my furniture or home.

I’m not talking about friendly advice that one person passes onto another. I’m talking about someone inserting themselves into my life decisions and refusing to respect my opinion. I’m talking about having to full-on defend myself for months over a choice that I made that doesn’t impact the other person. I’m referring to “advice” like this:

• “You shouldn’t get a dog. You’ll regret it. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have my dog.”
• “You shouldn’t get a Samoyed.” (Even though that’s the breed I’ve wanted for a decade)
• “You shouldn’t move to St. Pete. You should live in Hyde Park instead. That’s where I would live.”
• “You should buy a house.”
• “You shouldn’t buy a house.”
• “You shouldn’t buy THAT mattress, you should get the ______ mattress instead.”
• “You shouldn’t get your Apple Watch at the Apple store, you should get it at Best Buy.”
• “You shouldn’t paint your walls white, that’s boring. It’ll just look washed out.” (Even though that’s MY style)
• “You shouldn’t quit your job. You should wait a year until you get a promotion.”
• “You shouldn’t go to Europe, you might land a six-figure job at Louis Vuitton.” (This one still confuses me)
• “You shouldn’t study cosmetology.” (Even though that was my life-long dream since I was 4-years-old)
• “You should go to business school.”
• “You shouldn’t move to Florida, you should stay in Wisconsin and finish your degree.” (Even though I have severe seasonal affective disorder)
• “You should break up with your boyfriend, he seems TOO into you.” (Ummmm it’s called love, and isn’t that a good thing?)
• “You should eat dairy.” (Even though I’m lactose intolerant) 
• “You should at least eat butter.” (Yep, still lactose intolerant over here)
• “You should be on birth control.” (Even though it made me lactose intolerant, severely depressed, and made me lose my hair!) “It doesn’t matter, you should still be on a low dose of birth control.”

These are just a few examples of the opinions I’m talking about. Maybe you can relate?

“Why do you care, Heather?”

And I’m willing to bet there’s someone else reading this post now, thinking the same insensitive thought. “Why do you even care, Heather?” 

Here’s why I care: I’m tired of living my life having to defend every single decision that I make. Who I choose to date, what dog I’m getting, where I get the dog, what house I want to live in, what TV I put in my own damn living room, or what podcast I listen to. I’m only 24 years old and I. am. exhausted. I’m so, completely, 100% exhausted. I’m tired of having arguments with people where I defend the choices I make that don’t even affect them. It’s too frustrating. 

There comes a point where you can only be disrespected by so many people. There comes a point where you can’t take having to argue your life decisions anymore. I hit my limit about two years ago.

Secondly, you and I are human beings. And you know what that means? We all have our own tastes; our own opinions; and our own values. And one person’s tastes, opinions, and values are not BETTER than another’s. This is why we choose to live differently. Some of us choose to not get married or have kids. Some of us decide that we need a big house and a high paying job, while other people decide they want a more simple life. Some of us like the color white for a living room and some like it beige. And guess what? That’s ok. We are all very different people. If we were all clones of each other and made all of the exact same decisions, life would be SO BORING! It wouldn’t even be worth living in the first place. We would all be clones who ate the same food, went to the same school, vacationed in the same spots, decorated our homes the same, etc. There would be no such thing as color, art, or diversity.

Life would be like that movie “Pleasantville” with Reese Witherspoon and Tobey Maguire. In the movie, Pleasantville is a television program and is a “place where life is simple, people are perfect, and everything is black and white.” A place where all the citizens are simple-minded and the world has absolutely no problems, worries, or violence. And NOTHING exists outside of Pleasantville. 

One night, while Pleasantville plays in the background, the brother and sister start fighting over the remote (apparently a magic remote) which ends up transporting them into the world of “Pleasantville” forcing them to live in this black and white, 50s lifestyle where everyone’s desires are repressed and everyone is exactly the same as each other! Do we really want real life to be like that? I’m thinking no.

Why does this matter?

So at this point, you might be wondering, “Ok, why does this matter, Heather?” Well, it turns out that my theory was correct: I’m not the only person who struggles with this issue! In fact, this is something that countless people struggle with, but we just don’t talk about it.

During one of my therapy sessions, my therapist shared with me that my experience seemed more extreme than most of her patients, BUT not abnormal. This is actually a very common complaint among women in particular. Most of her patients that she sees struggle with being bulldozed by other people’s opinions about what they should and shouldn’t be doing. According to my therapist, the difference between me and the other patients she sees is that at least I still fight back.

The patients that she sees who struggle with this challenge have completely given up on asserting themselves altogether. After years of this happening, they reached the point where they have lost their voice. Instead, they’ve become so convinced that their opinion is invaluable and wrong that they don’t make choices for themselves or speak up when they feel uncomfortable.

I don’t know about you, but when I hear that I feel so sad. It’s heartbreaking to me to know that there are girls who have completely given up altogether. Who have accepted that society doesn’t respect them enough that they find it easier to let other people sit in the driver’s seat of their own life. If you ask me, I think this needs to stop.

The reason why this matters is that it’s about time that we all learn an important lesson. A lesson that history should have taught us over and over and over again by now. We have to learn to RESPECT each other. To COEXIST. To live in harmony with the other people in our lives without feeling the need to fix them or shape them into how we want them to be.

Because A) It’s not nice. We’re adults and we should know this is freaking rude. Right? AND B) I bet 99% of people would say that living in a Pleasantville would be extremely boring and not fun at all.

So, why do we try so hard to control another person when we know these things to be true?

Why do we do this? 

After putting much thought into this over the last year, I have a few theories as to why we do this to each other.

1. We tend to think we know more than everyone else

I noticed this in people, regardless of age and gender. The vast majority of us think that we know more than everybody else. That we have the correct tastes, opinions, values, and perspective and everyone else is batsh*t crazy. It’s why whenever election time comes around the entire country’s population ends up dividing into two groups and HATING each other. Come election time in every cocktail party, class discussion, and neighborhood conversation you could cut the tension with a knife.

2. We can look at each other’s lives with clarity

Isn’t it interesting how when you look at another person’s life you can tell exactly what they have to do to better themselves? For example, you can look at your friend’s toxic relationship and think, “If she would just break up with him she would be SO much happier.” But when it comes to our own lives it’s a mystery! We’re so emotionally involved in our own lives that we can’t look at it clearly. Yet, we can look at someone else’s life and see what WE feel they need to do to improve because we’re not as invested in it. 

However, it comes across as treating the other person like they are our project. As if we have some sort of authority over another person’s life when in reality NONE of us have it figured out. And also none of us REALLY know for sure what another person “should” or “shouldn’t” do because we’re taking an outside perspective of their life and placing our life experiences on it.

3. We like having a sense of control over others

Playing off of what I said in #2, our own lives are a mystery to us. We all have problems, we all have issues, and health concerns and life crises, that we honestly don’t know how to fix. It’s stressful and overwhelming, isn’t it? Which is why New Year’s Resolutions fail over and over again. It’s hard! Life is hard! Which is why having a sense of control over someone else makes us feel good. It makes us feel better that even though our lives are FAR from perfect if we could just insert ourselves into a conversation and share with someone all of the opinions we have about improving their lives, it makes us feel better. In some cases, it gives us a little power trip because we are asserting ourselves over another person and putting them down. 

But it also makes us feel in control in a good way. It makes us feel valuable, powerful, helpful, smart, and capable. Our own life might be a mess, but at least we were able to fix someone else’s problem. For many people, even if their opinion was not invited or appreciated by the other person, we still feel as if we helped out. A classic example of this would be the relationship between mothers and their children. Moms LOVE that feeling of swooping in and telling their children what to do because it makes them feel happy and helpful regardless of if it actually helped.

This does not mean that we like controlling other people like puppets (although let’s be honest some people do) it just means that we like having control in general because many people lack that control in their own lives.

4. Gender plays a huge role in this issue 

I’m a young woman. Therefore society tends to view me as someone who is weak and needs assistance. As someone who can’t possibly know what she wants out of life and have her own valid opinion. People feel the need to swoop in and “assist” young women by telling them what to do. But it’s not just MEN who do this. In my own experience, most of the time it’s actually women doing this to other women. Society views young women in particular as if they were children who need to be guided and assisted through every decision.

This is also why when I talk to men about this issue they have NO idea what I’m referring to. Men aren’t typically bulldozed in conversations. When they say “NO” to someone, people hear the word “no.” When women say “NO” to someone, people hear the phrase, “I don’t know, convince me.”

And lastly, I think it’s safe to say that gender plays a huge role in this issue because of how men respond to this topic. I’m referring to the question, “Why do you care?” It seems to me that men don’t have to care about someone inserting themselves into their business, but women do. Because when women say no to something or voice their opinions it’s often followed by a long lecture from the other person trying to convince them to choose differently. Men’s opinions and decisions are often respected in society whereas women have to struggle with this issue for decades. If someone doesn’t respect a man’s opinion, they can just go on with their day, but for women, this is an issue that comes up every day for years. We have to constantly defend our opinions so we HAVE to care about this topic, simply because it’s something that affects us more.

I believe that if I was a man, I wouldn’t have people arguing with me about my paint color for TWO YEARS. And I certainly don’t think that I would have been forced to open up a credit card after saying that I didn’t want one.

Disclaimer: I’m NOT at all shaming men in this post and not saying that this experience is the same for all men and women everywhere. I’m simply saying that throughout history and even now, men have been allowed to assert themselves and make their own decisions without needing to defend them. Again, I want to acknowledge that I know this is not 100% the case for everyone.

How do we fix this if we’re on the receiving end?

Of course, you know that I’m not going to leave you hanging with this problem fresh on your mind without addressing HOW to fix it and my takeaways. If you are struggling with this same problem, here are 5 tips that I put together to help you hold your own in a world that just won’t listen.

1. Trust your intuition 

Trusting your intuition is something that I’ve talked about many times in my blog by now. If you want to learn more about intuition, make sure to check out my blog post “How to Recognize Universal Signs.” But I’m bringing it up again now because I know first-hand that it’s extremely difficult to trust your intuition about your own life’s decisions when you have people SCREAMING at you to make another choice. Even if you’ve had a knowingness your entire life about what you should be doing, when it’s you against everyone in your family or every professor at your school, that internal compass is so difficult to trust. It’s much more subtle than a room full of people drinking red wine and criticizing your decisions. 

You look at these people in your life being so vocal about what you “should” be doing, that eventually, you trust them over your own instinct. Even though your internal compass, gut feelings, interests, and skills are all pushing you towards one thing, all of that can be immediately replaced with someone else’s voice, closed-mindedness, and fear-based mentality. Because your intuition doesn’t have a physical voice. You have to really want to listen to it.

But deep down, only YOU know what’s right for you. Only you can tell what’s the right decision for you to make for your own well-being and happiness. As loud as people may scream, as rude as they may get, as nosey as they may be – you have to trust in yourself. Your intuition can give you all the answers that you need and only by having that faith in yourself can you be happy and reach your highest potential and evolvement.

2. Keep it a secret

In a previous blog post that I wrote, “How I Freed Myself From the Opinions of Others,” I wrote about how I learned that if I kept secrets about my life’s decisions from the people who are unsupportive of me I saved myself countless arguments and passive-aggressive comments. 

The people who are supportive of my lifestyle, my dreams, and my interests I share everything with. But the people who aren’t supportive of me, I’m very selective about what I tell them. At first, when I made this decision to keep secrets from people, I remember feeling very sad about it. I was sad that I wouldn’t be able to open up and talk about myself with family, friends, and other important people in my life. But then I realized that with unsupportive people, I’ve never been able to open up to anyways! Keeping secrets about myself has been a lifesaver! 

But I don’t mean keeping secrets in a sketchy or negative way. I just mean that if someone I know is extremely against a choice I make, I’m not going to bring it up and invite an argument. If someone you know has very strong opinions about plastic surgery, then why tell them you’re getting it done if you know it’ll lead to a fight? If someone you know is against a gluten-free or vegan lifestyle, then why mention that you’re going vegan or gluten-free? It’s unfortunate that we have to omit details about ourselves from conversation to avoid being talked down to, but it works.

3. Surround yourself with supportive people

I will admit this is something that takes a while to do. You can’t just change your entire network automatically, but you do it one day at a time. My favorite way to do this is by getting someone’s number and scheduling a call or meeting them for coffee. It takes a while, but by slowly building that one relationship at a time, you’ll look back at your experience over the last few months and realize what a profound change your new circle has had on your mindset.

4. Practice what to say

I’ve been talking about this in therapy for weeks and I’ve analyzed this issue for the last year trying to figure out why people do this to me and how to stop it. But still, all that analyzing didn’t help me when someone made me open up a credit card that I didn’t want. It didn’t make all of the opinions from others come to a halt. If you’re on the receiving end of this, the best thing that you can do is spend some time alone and PLAN OUT what to say when something like this happens.

Because I know that when I’m actually in a place where someone is disrespecting me, I’m so shocked that I don’t even know how to respond. For that reason, the situation gets out of hand and before you know it you’re stuck talking with someone who’s being extremely forceful about their opinions or you have multiple people ganging up on you at the same time. To prevent this from happening, I recommend writing and practicing ready-made phrases to say when you’re in the situation. These phrases should be short and sweet, not some long drawn out explanation as to why your opinion matters (like I did in this post lol). They should be short phrases that you have ready so you can use them when you notice this happening.

For example, Matt came up with one once where he said: “Thank you for the suggestion, we will take it into consideration.” It was great, and certainly got the point across, but it was a tad formal! But don’t just choose the phrase and hope that you’ll remember it or be able to use it in real life, it’s important to visualize it and practice. Practice saying this to yourself (maybe in the mirror) so you can practice how assertive you want to come across as well as your tone or facial expressions. This will allow you to practice the phrase so you can use it easily in real-time.

The other reason why it’s important to practice is that by playing around with the way you say it you’ll practice a way of saying the phrase that doesn’t come across as being rude. If it does it will only cause the person to get defensive. 

5. Remember that change starts with you

There are people like me who are more-so on the receiving end of this behavior, but because of this, it’s often behavior that they eventually learn and do to others even if we don’t realize it. For example, have you ever been going about your day having a conversation with someone and say something and immediately think, “Oh my gosh. My mother just came out of my mouth!” That happens to me all the time. We don’t just pick up on someone’s physical habits, we also learn how to interact with others.

Because I’ve become so hyper-aware of people disrespecting my decisions I’ve caught myself passing my opinions and “advice” onto others. The most important thing to take away if you notice that this has happened to you is self-awareness. Don’t just play victim, but notice what has happened to you and recognize that urge to react the same way to others. It’s surprising how much passing our opinions onto other people has become a knee-jerk reaction. Become self-aware so that you can resist the urge to do it to someone else because change starts with you.

Important lessons for all of us. My takeaways:

As much as I felt that it was important to share advice for people like me on the receiving end of opinions, this is a topic that’s not just up to people like me to change. This is a challenging social issue that’s going to take everyone to change. So I wanted to include important lessons and takeaways for all of us to embody. Because it’s not fair for certain people to be steamrolled in life just because of their gender or demeanor.

I think that it’s vital that we all learn these basic lessons and carry them into our interactions with others so that we can all live in harmony regardless of having different opinions, styles, or values. It’s completely ok to have a close relationship with someone (whether it be a family member, friend, co-workers, or neighbor) and have different opinions or disagree. If we all embodied these lessons today, I know for a fact that we would live in a much better world. 

1. Understand there’s a difference between advice and opinions

Over the last several years where I became extremely frustrated with people trying to control me, I gained a reputation for hating ADVICE. But the truth is, I LOVE advice. I appreciate advice and I regularly ask people for advice about health concerns, business, blogging, etc. It’s why I network with other female entrepreneurs, have a business coach, see a therapist, see a wellness ambassador, etc. I love talking with other people about life and hearing their advice.

What I don’t love is someone offering me their opinion and being extremely disrespectful towards me about my choices, style, and life decisions and arguing with me in an attempt to try to pressure me to do something else. Such as live in a city that I don’t want to live in. That is not advice, that’s someone shoving their opinion at me and then trying to pass it off as “helpful advice.” Advice and opinions are two entirely different things. Advice is usually given when someone needs help with something. You give advice when there is a problem that someone is having or if they need help making a decision.

If I said that I was unsure of which town to move to after graduation, and you suggested that I drive through the different towns around Tampa, Jacksonville, and Miami to help me decide which area I saw myself living in, THAT’S giving someone helpful advice. Now, if I were to say that I’ve made up my mind that I want to live in St. Pete and have wanted to live there for a year and you were to respond by spending months trying to get me to live anywhere else and disrespecting a choice that I have made, that’s NOT helpful advice. That’s just projecting your opinions and feelings onto me while disrespecting a life-choice that I have already made. See what I mean? Advice and opinions are two entirely different things.

2. Know that everyone’s path in life is different 

If there’s one thing that I really want to become common sense is that everyone’s path in life is different. What tends to happen is that older generations tend to persuade younger generations to live the way that they did and make the exact same choices. But the problem is that every person’s path in life is different, as it should be. Every soul comes to this planet with their own mission, with a purpose, with unique skills and traits that nobody else has. And once we are in these walking, talking, breathing, monkey suits we have our own unique life experience, and as a result, we will choose a different path in life. Choosing to follow your own path, trust your intuition, and make your own choices is what we are all meant to do. Which is why it’s important that we all respect we’re each on our own journey.

3. Remember that times have changed

We’ve all heard that phrase “times have changed” but let’s take a minute to reflect on just HOW MUCH has changed in the last few decades. The world that I grew up in was extremely different than the one my parents and grandparents grew up in. Of course, it was because of the internet. As one adult in my life put it, “your world was much larger than the world we grew up in.” And I think that’s the perfect way to describe it. 

We connected with people online, we grew up as our technology evolved drastically, we watched people’s lives online, and we learned of more opportunities. In fact, it was other bloggers, YouTubers, and podcasters I found on the internet that inspired me to pursue a career in this. For our older family members, their world was a big as the community and the neighborhood they lived in. There weren’t travel bloggers and YouTubers that they followed that exposed them to new things. Now, the world that we live in is extremely different than the one that our parents and grandparents did. This is not to discount anyone’s life experience, it’s just to say that some of the opinions and “advice” that I’ve received doesn’t exactly apply anymore. For that reason, an ideology, opinion, or piece of advice that worked wonderfully several decades ago, is not going to work in 2019 and 2020. 

Which is why when I’m on the receiving end of getting so-called “advice” or opinions from people, it’s not always correct. Their minds are not open to the lifestyle and the career that I want for myself. They’re projecting their ideas on to me, without considering how different my values and ideas are having grown up in the 2000s. It’s important to remember this now and for many years to come, the world is changing quickly, and the advice we give doesn’t always apply for future generations. 

4. Know that people will ASK for your advice if they need it 

As I’m writing this takeaway, it sounds ridiculous to me. Saying that people will ask for advice when they need it, sounds like it should be common sense. But in reality, it’s not. I’m shocked by how willing people are to offer opinions about what I’m doing with my life when I haven’t even asked for them. So I feel the need to pass on this one simple lesson: people will ask you for advice when they need it. 

If someone presents you with a problem or says something along the lines of “what do I do?” THAT’S when you chime in. You don’t chime in when someone has already decided that their lifelong dream was to study cosmetology and argue with them until they change their mind and finally study business. Advice should serve a purpose, and it should be invited at least to some extent. 

5. Know that advice only needs to be shared one time or two times TOPS

Real advice should be given one or two times TOPS. It’s no longer advice when it’s repeated for months, when it comes up at every family dinner, when it’s morphed into one of the top things you discuss with that person. A good way to give someone REAL advice respectfully is to share it once. Once. 

If the person liked that advice and appreciated it, they will listen to you or they will reach out and ask to hear your thoughts again. But repeating it over and over and over does neither party any good. It only creates a source of tension. For example, repeating the same piece of advice “you shouldn’t paint your walls white” for two years to somebody only comes across as you being confrontational, picky, or scolding that other person. Sharing that opinion ONCE is plenty.

When a piece of “advice” is discussed in length for years or months to persuade someone to make a different decision or take a different path in life, it’s not true advice. That’s just trying to control another person and openly disrespecting the other person’s choices. 

6. Understand that old age doesn’t automatically make someone wise

Over the last two years, I’ve started to understand that old age doesn’t necessarily mean that a person is wise (even if they think they are). I used to believe that the adults in my life knew everything. I might have not liked them or agreed with them, but I thought that they were WISE. I thought that they were these authority figures that just knew everything. That they knew what was the exact right and wrong thing to do.

I mean they obviously looked older than me, they have more life experience, they certainly acted like they knew WAY more than I could fathom. But then something interesting happened. I graduated from college, I moved out of the house, and I became an “adult.” And I realized… HOLY SH*T I KNOW NOTHING. I wasn’t suddenly enlightened the moment that I became an adult. I realized that there was really no difference between me and adult figures in my life who were so vocal about how I should be living it. We’re all just basically kids with cars! And some extra money. So why did I have people in my life who were trying to be in the driver’s seat of my life? And why do WE also try to control other people? None of us have it figured out.

Old age doesn’t mean that you automatically know better than a younger person. But we tend to think it does, which makes us closed-minded. It also doesn’t mean that the older people in our lives know all the answers and that we should blindly trust them. None of us were gifted a book when we grew up called “How To Do Life.” Or “Everything You Should Know About Life.” We’re all trying to figure this sh*t out! Which is why we can’t just look toward someone else and think they have the answers for us. It also doesn’t mean that just because WE may be older than another person that we know what they “should” or “shouldn’t” be doing.

With this realization, I was able to understand that it’s not AGE that makes someone wise. There are women I have met in their 40’s and 50’s that act like they’re 13 and have no emotional intelligence (turn on “The Real Housewives” if you want to see what I mean). And there are 20-year-olds who amaze me with their wisdom. It’s traits like being open-minded, non-judgmental, and self-aware that make someone wise, so let’s carry those traits into our conversations with people!

7. Understand that another person’s life is not your project

I think that it’s worth mentioning that many people insert themselves into someone else’s lives out of a place of love. When you care deeply about someone you want the best for them. However, in doing that sometimes it comes across as trying to fix another person and make them a project. A classic example that comedians love to joke about would be the women who are attracted to certain types of men because they like the idea of helping them. But we all know how that plays out. 

For healthy, happy, supportive relationships, it’s important to understand that one person’s life is not ours to makeover (with the acceptation of the Fab Five from Queer Eye). You can’t project- manage someone’s life no matter what your relationship is. 

8. Know that there’s a paradigm shift 

I want to end this on a spiritual note because I know that this post focuses on a topic that’s not as pleasant to discuss. If you read Lost Online you’re probably aware of my New Age spirituality and philosophies that I like to sprinkle into my posts. I like to take an approach that encompasses self-help, wellness and lifestyle practices, and spirituality because I think they are all equally important.

That being said, in the time that we’re in right now, there is a massive change in consciousness occurring. More people are starting to have spiritual awakenings, question the old ways of doing things, and ask questions like, “What is my purpose in life?” The old paradigm is being replaced with the new one to take us all into our next stage of human evolvement. 

One of my all-time favorite books that talk about this topic is “The Celestine Prophecy,” by James Redfield. In the second chapter of the book, it discusses how “history is not just the evolution of technology; it is the evolution of thought.” Throughout each stage in history, we can see the physical advancements we have made as well as changes in how we view the world. “The Celestine Prophecy” discusses how there is this massive awakening happening and why. That in itself could require it’s own blog post, but the reason why I’m mentioning it here is that this paradigm shift is a major cause of the tension that we see in our interpersonal relationships. There’s friction between younger generations and enlightened individuals with those who are still ingrained in the old paradigm. It’s not just a disconnect that happens because of age, but a disconnect caused by different individuals embracing old and new ways of viewing the world and our purpose on earth.

When I look at this topic from that spiritual perspective, I can find so much peace and contentment. I don’t feel as if I’ve been bullied, I don’t feel like a victim. Instead, I feel kind of honored. I feel happy that I’m one of the individuals who can raise the vibration of the world and be a part of this incredible transformation. If you’re going through a similar struggle as I am, I encourage you to adopt that same change in mindset. Know that it’s not you against your family or friends or co-workers. We’re just at a point in time where people who are embracing the new paradigm are living in the same space as the old one, which is ingrained more in logic, fear, and routine. We can see this change happening everywhere we look today. It can be tense or stressful at times, but we’re living in the most incredible and beautiful period of time. We’re living during a time when everything is shifting. We’ve concurred the physical world, the scientific world, infrastructure, and industry and now it’s time to take the lessons that we learned throughout all of history and evolve. So if you find yourself being bullied by people into making different choices in life, stay true to yourself and understand that the tension your experience is just because you’re on a higher frequency than most.

Thank you for coming to Lost Online!

Wow! So this was a very loaded blog post this week. I went through my experience, I explored WHY I think we have this problem, how to deal with it through self-help practices, and lessons that I feel like everyone must embody if we want to change moving forward.

This was one of those blog posts that I created very much for myself, but also for other people out there who encounter this problem too. It took me several weeks to complete because I knew that by writing about this struggle I will be able to reframe it in my mind. Also because I wanted to fully comprehend every aspect of this social dynamic including how gender, age, and spiritually play into it. For that reason, I kept getting new insights that I originally haven’t discovered. I hope that I did the topic justice and relayed the message as positively as I could. Lastly, if you also struggle with external pressure from others stay true to yourself and what you know is right and know that there is NOTHING wrong with you. Your opinions, preferences, values, and style are valid.