How much did they pay you to give up your dreams?

{ please read until the end }

When I started my studies in business administration I thought this is the beginning of a big career.

Well, actually I didn’t.

All I was thinking was, how I could improve the consistency of my last brownies and where on earth I could get some good quality coconut oil (at a time where Switzerland was not that cool to have it in every grocery store)
My studies were all and nothing likewise. A good general qualification with a wide field of possibilities. As my parents would say: A solid base from which you can start building up. After years of studying, I thought, well now life starts. And then I thought the same after my internship, and after my first and second job.

When I look back I feel that my life is a series of if’s and when’s and once.

Once I have my diploma in business administration I will finally do what I love and where my talents lie. If I finish this internship, I will look for something else that suits me better. It’s just half a year. Don’t be such a cry-baby. You can do it. And then once you’ve done this, then you can start to live. I could continue with that for other stages in my life but I don’t want to bore you. You might ask yourself now:

You might ask yourself now: „yeah, so why are you not just doing what you love?“

Maybe because I don’t know yet what exactly that is. It has to be something that inspires me to wake up every morning. Something that does not really feel like work because you love it so much that you could do it even after 5pm. I don’t even care about the field or the country where this would be. I know where my talents are but I don’t really know how that could fit in a life task.

It is an old story. One day you are sixteen and you your real life just started and then quietly and without you ever really noticing, someday is today. And then someday is yesterday. And this is your life. It sounds very scary to me. I don’t want a life of If’s and when’s. When I look back, I see that many things in my life happened really unplanned. When a successful life means having things the way I imagined them to be, then I’m a failure.

I didn’t love my field of study or my first jobs. But I didn’t hate it either.

Rather, I was ok with it.

I mean as a former student your expectations aren’t that high when it comes to internships or first jobs. The  „OK-Job“ pays the bills, it allows for a couple of fringe benefits, and it offers a decent vacation a couple times a year. I said to myself: “It’s not ideal, but it’s fine,” and I subconsciously knew I was lying to myself.

In February, I was on vacation in the United States. The last weeks I’ve spent in Hawaii and during the first week I got sick. First, it felt like a normal flu, but then after a while, I recognized that I am not getting better. I took medication and spent days after days in bed while outside the most beautiful tree were blooming and the sun was shining every day. I told myself once I am getting better I will appreciate a healthy life so much more and I’ll only do what I really love. No procrastination anymore. This incident woke up something inside of me. Food tasted better, colors were brighter, relationships were more intense and all the stuff I kept and the crap cluttering my room at home seemed a lot less important than it used to be.

I think what I need to do is appreciate the past the way it is and then finally let go. That is actually the only way to look forward. We cannot do much more than taking every day as he is and make the best out of it. Maybe sooner or later you’ll get everything you wish for. Maybe you’ll get more than you ever could have imagined. Who knows where life will take you.

But please if you feel the same, don’t be quiet about what’s inside you. Tell people. Use the comment form below. Instagram your goals with your friends. Email your confidants. And most important, share your desires at dinner with the family.