In this article I write about how we need to chill out, relax and to live a stress-free life. For many years I did not live life this way and found myself constantly worrying about what other people thought of me. This was not exactly a happy period in my life and after a lot of hard work and determination, I have managed to turn my life around. I now do not care at all what anyone else thinks of me. I had always wanted to be popular, liked and part of the in crowd. I bent over backwards to achieve this and often did and went to places that I did not want to go to, just to please other people. You should not bow down to peer pressure but I certainly did. I am not really sure why I craved this attention but I seemed to have a need to be liked. I was constantly paranoid that people were talking behind my back and laughing at me. I lived life like this for quite a long time and was basically being a fool as I was often depressed. I needed to get myself out of a rut and sought inspiration from books, newspapers and television. I was now twenty-two years of age and had achieved very little in life up to this point. In one of the newspapers I read, there was an article in the letters page which had been sent in by a woman who was in her seventies. It was quite a funny letter and she wrote about how she loved being old. She mentioned that she can now stay in bed all day if she wants to and does not care what people think of her. If she is invited to a social occasion which she does not want to attend, she will say no without feeling any sense of guilt. She wrote that for the first time in her life she does not care at all what people think of her and lives life doing exactly what she wants to do. She ended by saying that she felt free for the first time in her life and that she had never been happier. I thought about what she had written and realised that I also felt trapped. I did not want to wait until I was in my seventies to be set free, I wanted freedom now. I had to change my attitude to life and I decided to stop trying so hard. I no longer go to places I do not want to go to. If people call me boring I do not care, I reply, boring but happy. I now feel that I am stronger mentally than I ever have been and I am also happier than ever before. I have looked at myself in the mirror (a bit weird) and have thought about how I live my life. I think I am a decent person, I try to be kind to everyone I meet, I do not cheat and I work very hard to achieve my goals. I actually for the first time in my life, quite like myself, therefore if other people choose not to, that is fine by me. In conclusion life is to short to waste worrying about what other people think of you. Make the most of life, learn to like yourself and relax, worrying about something does not help anyway, it makes situations even worse. Good luck in your quest for happiness and freedom. |
