The Three Stages of Life
I hope you’re not expecting a deep philosophical post on the meaning of life and how to not fuck it up. Because this is not that.
However, I will highlight one major problem most encounter with some thoughts on how to counter it.
Let’s say life consists of three stages. For shits n’ giggles — and professionalism — let’s assign a name to each stage…
Stage One: Birth
Stage Two:
Stage Three: Death
The reason I left stage two blank is that while many of us pretend, the reality is nobody really knows what the fuck is going on here.
Like, how am I even typing this? Let alone able to publish it on the Internet for your reading pleasure. And it is a pleasure!
You with me? Or you thinking WTF? You’re thinking WTF! So let’s just go ahead and call it like it is…
Stage One: Birth
Stage Two: WTF?
Stage Three: Death
Now for the analysis:
Birth and death are easy because they’re involuntary — you take in your first breath and let out your last. No problem. Or do you take in your last? I don’t know. I’m still in the WTF stage.
And that’s what I want to talk to you about because stage two is where shit gets complicated—real complicated.
One minute you’re pissing in a potty, the next you have all these “life decisions” to make. Yuck! Society also primes you to believe your life is at stake with each and every one. Fuck a duck—It’s a lot of pressure!
Unfortunately, because our ability to make decisions for ourselves is tainted, it often carries catastrophic consequences. Like anxiety and depression.
Because we’re not making decisions for ourselves, we’re making them for others, in an effort to appease—for acceptance—with a complete disregard for our own feelings because we’re more concerned with how others might perceive us.
We rarely focus internally and ask ourselves questions like how will it make me feel? Will I be proud? Will I be happy? Will I feel good about myself? Will it get me to where I want to go, not where someone else says I should go? And is it something I’ll likely regret?
Sidenote: Did anyone else feel there was a “Que Sera, Sera” moment in amongst those questions? Will I be happy, will I be rich? Here’s what she said to me… ”Que Sera, Sera—Whatever will be, will be.”
Anyways, instead of having fun and living our best life, we get caught up in all the bullshit as we try to make sense of something nonsensical. By that, I mean spending a lifetime miserable while desperately seeking validation from others.
Our objective should be to enjoy the “WTF” stage as much as humanly possible.
To do this, it helps if you follow your gut (or your intuition). Your gut speaks to you on a deeper level than your mind or your heart. Both your mind and heart will rapidly intervene. And the second you allow that to happen, everything can spiral out of control because your heart is stupid and your mind is full of biases that will have you questioning everything.
This will lead to another decision—the worst decision—your indecision.
Before you know it, ten years have passed and you’re still miserable working in an office for some prick you can’t stand. When you could have followed your dreams and made it in Hollywood—or at least taken a crack at it?
Happens all the time. In all aspects of life. We allow the opinions of others to prevent us from living our best life. And many of these pricks opinions shouldn’t matter because you don’t even like them in the first place. Yet you still allow them to stop you from making that one decision that could change your world forever.
Anxiety thrives in your indecision. You must start listening to your gut and taking action before the other two get involved and fuck it all up for you.
That way, when you’re headed for The Undertaker, you’ll take comfort in knowing you gave it your best shot. And that’s really all that matters.
This is your journey, nobody else’s. Today’s bullshit will be forgotten tomorrow. Unless, of course, you punish yourself by refusing to let go of it. And what good can come from that?
The beautiful thing is everything can be corrected. You get plenty of shots and endless opportunities.
“You’ll make decisions you’ll regret. You’ll get into relationships you’ll regret. You’ll trust people you wish you hadn’t. We all do. It’s part of life.”
Don’t stay in shitty jobs, shitty relationships or attached to shitty decisions because you believe it’s too late to correct them. Grow and evolve. Live and learn. Stumble and fall. Embrace it all.
Not knowing what’s around the corner is exciting. If your life is shit today, you have an opportunity to make it great tomorrow. And that’s a pretty good realization considering you don’t really know WTF is going on in this stage anyway, right?
At the end of the day, if you want to make changes in your life, if you’re not happy and you feel you could be doing better, if you feel you’re letting yourself down and maybe others around you? All you have to do you is decide you’re going to do something about it.
That’s the most powerful decision you can make — the one when you definitely decide to respect yourself enough to drop your ego and do what it takes to start living your best life. For you.