The Great Pretender, Pretending I'm Doing Well

The Great Pretender, Pretending I'm Doing Well
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We all have expectations, some realistic, some not so -- goals that we set for ourselves that we want to accomplish, despite life's little slip-ups and mishaps. We want to get that particular job, drop 10 lbs before summer, have a baby before we're 30, make sure we get published before it's too late. All sorts of life's ambitions we create to push forward and succeed on some level.

But the reality is is that sometimes we set the bar too high and we can't reach the goal, the impossible, and then we kill ourselves for not reaching it. In the amount of time we spend beating ourselves up over it we could create a new goal for ourselves in its place, something realistic.

Every moment of our lives we plan out -- married by 25, kids by 30, house in the country with a white picket fence and a dog in the yard but the reality is that most of us are still struggling to establish our careers at 27, dating nightmares and being forced to move back home against our will because we're broke. Sometimes reality's a total bitch.

I know that as a kid I wanted to be an actress, live in Beverly Hills with Freddie Prinze, Jr. and go to premieres every night, but my reality is a day to day constant search for meaning in a life that's quickly passing by and wondering when my moment is, when I can finally start doing what I want and stop being questioned. To know less of my limits, and more of my own power and abilities. To gain independence I once had but lost.

Everyone always wonders when the snap is going to happen, when you have had enough and want to lose your mind because it's inevitable but the thing is, something is always going to counteract the snap and make you face the reality that this is happening, deal with it and move on. But we tend to harp on the the problem instead of the solution.

So let's change the course of our lives, let's make things realistic and realize we can't do everything, that conquering the world isn't possible but we can make a contribution in our own individual ways.

Do you slap a smile on your face when you have a problem or do you deal with it in the moment?

For more by Nikki Luongo, click here.

For more on emotional wellness, click here.

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