You don’t need to impress anyone:

You don’t need to impress anyone.

You don’t need to live up to anyone’s expectations.

You will never live up to someone else’s expectations of who you’ll be.

Stop chasing external validation.

Stop chasing your parent’s approval.

Stop looking for someone to pat your back and tell you you’re doing a good job.

No one’s going to do that for you.

You have to do that for yourself.

You have to decide what life you want to live and go get it.

People will help along the way, but only if you take the steps.

You have to want that life.

Spoke to my sister today about her relationship and it was fascinating to unlock how wrong I’ve been.

It’s not until you experience things yourself do you appreciate how wrong you were in the past.

How quick you were to judge circumstances where you’d had no personal experience.

So many people are like that.

We like to have opinions about experiences and situations we’ve never been a part of.

It’s very easy to judge from the outside. It’s very different to have lived that experience yourself.

We understand the world a bit more but sometimes it feels like we’re trapped.

You can’t have honest opinions about the world.

We can’t really say how we really feel.

We’re all playing a character.

We switch them depending on who we’re around, but that charade gets tired.

If you can be your authentic self around everyone, you’re winning.

Because there’s no hiding.

There’s no shame.

There’s no guilt.

You’re always being you.

Not everyone will like it but who cares.

You don’t need everyone to like you.

You need to find people you vibe with, who have your back, who are going places, who you can have fun with, who care about you and who push you.

You don’t need many of those people.

You don’t even need those people to be close to you.

They can be celebrities, role models, or people in industries you look up to.

Learn from the person who has the life you want to live.

Understand them.

Study them.

Figure out how they got to where they did.

Listen to their story.

Implement their lessons in your life.

Sit down with yourself.

Figure out what you want in life.

No one else can answer that question for you.

You have to sit down alone with your own thoughts and write something down.

It’s up to you.

If you’re happy where you are and comfortable with where you’re going, who cares what other people think?

You don’t need to live up to their expectations.

You never had to.

But it’s so hard to say no, especially to those who gave you everything.

Who brought you into this world.

Who allowed you to live.

Who got you to this point in time.

To tell them ‘no’ is very fucking hard.

Especially when they’re immigrants.

Immigrant stories are different.

Mantras like ‘Nothing is given, everything is earned, go work your ass off’ are unwritten rules of the house

It’s hardest to tell those parents that you’re not following their path.

In the moment it’s brutal.

But when you work your ass of to show them, you’ll eventually accomplish way more than you could ever imagine.

That drive becomes internal.

It becomes about you.

You against the world.

What do you got?

Because the world gives no shits about you.

There’s always people doing better and there’s always people doing worse.

No one is watching yet everyone is watching.

Just do you.

You don’t need to impress anyone.

Impress yourself.