Stressed living up to other people’s expectations? STOP!
Ambition is healthy as long as it’s YOUR ambition.
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You: EUREKA! I know exactly what I want to do! I want to be a nurse and look after sick people!
Well-meaning relative: Brilliant! I can only encourage you. And what’s great about that is that being a nurse is only one step away from being a doctor! And once you’ve qualified as a doctor you can specialise in surgery, and then plastic surgery. Once you’ve got a few years of experience and a bit of a name for yourself, you can open your own practice, maybe in Beverly Hills, and then, with a couple of decades of heavy self-promotion and long hours you can get your own TV show, write a couple of books and employ a dozen staff and by the age of fifty-five you’ll be earning millions and you’ll never have to work again.
You: But I want to be a nurse …
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Well said. Bruce Lee, and I’m slightly paraphrasing, said, “I’m not here in this world to live up to your expectations, and you’re not here to live up to mine.”
I see goals in the same way. I shouldn’t have your goals. I should have my own.
How easy it is to aspire and follow the dreams of others, forgetting our own.
and so true that you are brother
This is a great example of what relatives and/or friends do.
or you could just write a blog about a nurse