Taking Back Control

A Game Changer in redefining the future.

I returned to campus a few weeks ago with all the mental commotion I’d stirred up in my head about what the new semester would be like. Sometimes, however, I forget that even after some of the darkest times, the sun always comes up the next day; the world carries on.

I was dreading a lot of the things that I would soon come face to face with this semester. COVID was still rampant, so campus life would reflect the same monotony that sprung me into my own dark rabbit hole just a few months prior. I was mostly worried that I’d be in the same headspace: school becoming my only priority and it overhauling my well-being as I pretended that it wasn’t happening every day.

My roommate and I were talking about some of these challenges one night, and in a way, she gave me a newer perspective on how we can reevaluate the hardships we endure. We often found ourselves wishing and regretting certain events from happening in our lives.

“My life would be so much easier if…”

But as she said, life isn’t meant to be easy. What is meant to be, I’ve realized, is determined by ourselves. It’s meant to be challenging, even though we wish and hope everything can fall into our laps at the snap of our fingers. It’s also meant to be the way we picture it in our heads and the way we choose to see it in our realities. If I wanted to have a thriving semester, I had to believe it. If I felt like I wasn’t making the most of my college experience, I had the power to control that and the responsibility to change that. This perspective shift makes the good parts of our lives feel even better when we see that light at the end of the tunnel.

It’s been empowering to think that if I can choose how I feel and act, I’m limitless, in a way. I shouldn’t allow the mental commotion stirring in my head to stop me from pursuing what I want. The challenges and rejections I face now reaffirm the newfound power I see in fulfilling the empty promises I made myself last semester.

Now more than ever, I see that everything that was stopping my pursuits last semester is now here to empower me.

What’s stopping you?

Disclaimer: I want to note that I understand everyone’s circumstances vary and that several factors in their lives are out of their control. However, this was for the purpose of empowering people to not feel restricted by their self-imposing thoughts and to encourage them to feel like they are in control of their lives, regardless of their challenges.