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Making You Proud



I recently heard an interesting definition of success: “Living a life that would make your 18-year-old self proud of who you’ve become.”

At 18 years old, our entire adult lives are ahead of us. We have (probably) recently escaped high school and are eager, if not even a little fearful, to begin the next chapter of our life. Maybe we were applying to colleges or trying to get our first “real” job. We hadn’t yet been jaded by the dead-end nine-to-five job nor had we been corrupted by the pressure and politics surrounding many careers. We were naïve and full up hopes and dreams. We were probably better at seeing the world for how we wanted it to be than how it actually was. Many of us had grand plans for our futures.

How has that played out for you? While my life has certainly not taken the course I thought it might and even hoped it would, I can say there were many wonderful surprise twists and turns that took my life on a better course than I had ever imagined. However, in light of the definition above, I must ask myself, “Are those blessings in my life because of me or in spite of me?”

I have thought about myself as an old man, looking back at my life and weighing my choices and efforts, but I have not often thought about how the innocent, wide eyed, 18 year-old-version of myself would view those same things. It’s a new perspective to consider. Would he be frustrated with the opportunities I’ve wasted over the last 20 years or be grateful for the ones of which I took advantage? Would he look at me and think, “That is the man I want to become!”? I hope to live in such a way that the young man I once was, peering into the future, would be thrilled to age into the man I have become. Looks like I’ve got some work to do, how about you?

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