Getting unstuck from parents: Decide on “how are you going to support yourself”?

There are two types of thinkers. We tend to mix and match poorly, but mixing and matching we do regardless. When your parents are very pragmatic and you are somewhat of a happy-go-lucky type, hoping that something will come up when the Planets align, it probably won’t happen for you. Your parents will never let you go emotionally until you answer this question to yourself: How are you going to support yourself? How do you WANT TO make your ends meet? What is the actual adult process of choice you will follow to pay your bills? In other words, how are you going to be making your money exactly? And now… Don’t flake. Whatever it is that you want to do, you need to DECIDE and be SERIOUS about it. No “well we’ll see how it goes” -level decisions. Decide what your adult identity is going to be like. What do you want for yourself?

“Don’t half-ass it”

Matthew McConaughey’s father told his son, who decided to quit studying law and changing his major to acting, that “Fine by me, but don’t half-ass it”. This, to me, is one of the best pieces of parental advice I’ve ever heard. “Whatever you do, do it, but be serious about it. Make it happen. Don’t treat it like a dream but as an actual job.” I think everyone who wishes for something other than a 9-to-5 job should well listen to that advice. “Don’t be a child about it. Own it. Don’t half-ass it.”

The reason we tend to half-ass things and subsequently fail at what we wanted to achieve, or fall just an inch short of it, is because we are embarrassed about wanting something that so many other people fail at trying. So we join the failures rather than the winners.

This is not so much that the Universe will NEED this decision, but it is to stop your friends and family from second-guessing whether you really want to be doing what you are setting out to do, or are you just doing something for the sake of doing something and pretending as if you were doing something when really, you don’t want to.

Subscribe to get a Daily Message