As much as January gets all the hype for new beginnings, September represents a fresh start for me in ways the post-holidays new year can’t. The student perk: newly sharpened No. 2 pencils and a blank slate of spiral notebooks with covers intact. The adult equivalent: A time of welcoming new activities and different perspectives after the laid-back days of summer (maybe still with No. 2 pencils and new notebooks!).
As schedules become busier again, how can you more intentionally fill your days with activities that go beyond what the world expects and more toward what you really want to do? What’s holding you back? Let’s talk about your box.
Schools test kids early to determine their aptitude level and then place them into groups based on their abilities. This differentiation is meant to benefit students – to meet them wherever they are and give them the support they need. But sometimes, once you’re placed on one track, it can be hard to move to another one.
The rigidity of placement continues into adulthood. You always said you wanted to be a doctor when you grew up, so your family can’t understand why now you’d want to open a coffee shop instead. You’ve worked hard for a promotion, but your boss won’t give you a chance because they only see you doing the job you’ve held for years. Your friends resist your attempts to drink less because you’ve always been the life of the party. Once people have you fixed in their minds a certain way, it’s hard for them to see you any other way.
We even do it to ourselves. We get comfortable doing things a certain way – even if it’s not good for us – so we keep doing it. It’s easier to eat the unhealthy food you’re familiar with than to learn new recipes. It’s less confrontational to let toxic comments from a family member pass than to have the hard conversation calling them out on their behavior.
But you shortchange yourself when you just stick with what you know because you’re afraid of change. The world needs you to be the best version of you, not the watered-down version you think is expected of you. When you really believe in what you’re doing, you put the energy of your best self behind it and we all benefit.
Whether you’re doing it to yourself, or others are putting you there, it’s time to get out of the box. The box that categorizes you as the smart student, the lazy kid, the athletic teenager, the friend no one can count on, the messy roommate, the middle child, the one who’s always late, the pretty cheerleader, the dumb jock, the nerd, or the victim. These boxes limit us. And when we’re in them, we struggle to see ourselves – and others struggle to see us – any other way. The pressure to live up to these arbitrary (and often-outdated) visions is soul-crushing. Even if you were once any of these things, they were just one piece of who you were at one moment in time. People change. Our visions need to change, too.
Instead of just thinking outside the box, why don’t we get rid of the box altogether? If the box is still there, the temptation is to get back in it when things get hard. So throw it away. Recycle it. Allow yourself to think bigger. And be wary of people who don’t support you when you’re just trying to be who you are.
When somebody asked our younger selves “what do you want to do when you grow up,” we didn’t hesitate to say whatever came to mind. Doctor? Absolutely. Astronaut? Sure. Superhero? Why not. The confines of reality were irrelevant to us, and no one stopped us from dreaming big.
Why do we let the world’s boundaries shrink us? At what age do we decide to start playing it safe? Even if your reality doesn’t allow you to fly to the moon but you still care about it, can you get involved in something related to that – join an astronomy club or write articles for a relevant publication or website? No superhero job posts immediately come to mind, but working or volunteering to make a difference in the lives of others in need would get you the same feeling.
Eleanor Roosevelt famously said: “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” Go after THAT. You will be uncomfortable. You will not know what you’re doing. You might fail. Or you could succeed wildly at the very thing your heart most longs for.
