How much of your life do you owe to other people?

How much of your life do you owe to other people?

Whether good or bad, other people choose the trajectory in life in more ways than you imagine.

I’ve been super fortunate. I was born into a family that valued education above all else and had the ability to show me the world. I didn’t deserve that but I was fortunate enough to be born into that situation.

For many others, they could be born into situations where they’re parents are alcoholics or drug addicts or have anger issues or can’t keep a job or are raising a family on their own with no one else around them for support. That’s how so many people grow up around the world.

When you’re born into a situation as a child where you see a specific environment in your early years, you assume that environment is normal. You don’t know anything else so your normal is whatever you see around you. If you’re born into a household that’s stable, has loving parents and a huge support system around, that influences you a lot as you grow up.

If you’re born in an environment where drugs and alcohol are a normal part of the environment, that’s normal. You didn’t deserve that circumstance but you can’t change that. You were born into that family and that environment and there’s nothing you can do about that.

Many adults don’t comprehend how much their early childhood years decide their trajectory in life. A lot of people, whether good or bad, become who their parents wanted them to be when they were kids.

It happened to me.

I’m so grateful that I was raised in that environment that valued education but it also brought a ton of pressure. Growing up in an immigrant household where your Indian grandparents raised your dad and his siblings as a banker, doctor and lawyer, it’s very hard to top that. There’s literally nowhere else to go as an adult when your family has already hit the immigrant lottery.

So when I was growing up, that was the expectation. To get good grades, get a great job and earn a lot of money to make your family proud. Growing up, I was always striving to be at the top of the class even though I was always a year younger than everyone. If I ever brought home a bad grade, I was always shitting bricks because I was terrified of my parents. Scared that I wasn’t good enough. Terrified of disappointment. Fear of not living up to the family name.

That feeling still sticks with me to this day.

It pushed me to succeed academically, but it came at a cost. In Grade 10, I was breaking. I was burning out and I knew it. When you cry yourself to sleep every night buried in hours of homework, that’s not how a kid should grow up. My parents didn’t think anything of it but I knew. I couldn’t maintain this level of pressure on myself, especially considering I was only 14.

Looking back, the problems I had at that time pale in comparison to what I’ve had to deal with as an adult but at that time, it feels like your world is collapsing. Not getting 90s in IB, which is so ridiculously difficult, felt to me like I wasn’t good enough. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but the environment I grew up in created this internal pressure where I never felt good enough.

It’s not until the last few years through meditation and journaling till I realized why. Why I felt all this pressure. Why I had all these beliefs I wasn’t good enough.

It’s because of other people. It was because of my parents. It was because of my environment. It was because of what I thought was normal.

I was brainwashed into thinking life only worked out in a specific way. You go to school, you get good grades, you get into a good university, you get a good job, you get married to a nice person, you buy a house, you have kids, you work your ass off your whole life and then you retire. That’s what I thought life was, and that’s what many people think life is.

I’m here to tell you that’s all bullshit.

All of it.

That’s a social construct we’ve been brainwashed into believing by other people. By our parents, our friends, our parents’ friends, by our teachers, by social media, by the movies, by TV shows and by social media.

But that’s changing.

The world has advanced exponentially since our parents were kids. The Internet has revolutionized everything. I feel lucky because I was born into a situation where I got to explore my curiosities on the Internet that led me down many interesting paths that generations ago I would’ve never had the opportunity to understand.

In previous generations, if we were stuck in our circumstances, we had nowhere else to go. If you were born in Ancient Greece or into the slave trade in America, you had no choice. Your life was determined for you. Your path was set. You could’ve rebelled but if you weren’t born white or into aristocracy, you had very little choice over the trajectory of your life.

But today, we have the Internet. You can learn anything you want. You can discover the best ideas in history and have people teach it to you in video form while you eat dinner. That’s insane.

Yet it seems like most of the world is too focused on frivolous things. Social media has made so many people into zombies. They’re so addicted to these apps that they don’t realize how much it’s destroying their ability to think for themselves and be present. We’ve become people who are so concerned about others. 

Social media and the news makes us want to know what’s happening to everyone around us at all times. FOMO/fear of missing out has never been higher. We take vacations for pictures to show others on social media. We go to a concert to film the whole thing through our phones. We go to a restaurant to take a picture of every meal to make our friends and followers jealous of the spectacular life we’re living.

But it’s all bullshit. Social media has forced us into living our lives for others.

Screw other people.

They don’t matter, only you do.

No one else is living your life.

No one else cares about you.

Humans are selfish. Even our own parents and friends are too concerned with their own lives to really care what’s happening in ours.

So why do we live every day wanting to know what’s happening to other people? Why are we not prioritizing ourselves? Why are we not asking questions like what makes me happy? Would I still be doing this thing if I didn’t have to tell anyone about it? Am I living my life for myself or for other people?

It’s so hard to decondition ourselves because our entire lives have been for other people. Until you realize that no one else matters except you, you’re stuck in this endless loop of doing things for others.

Stop.

Do things for you.

No matter how much of your life you owe to others, you have the power to change your trajectory today.

Choose you, not anyone else.