You’re Asking Questions You ALREADY Know The Answer To (Stop Second Guessing Yourself)

I went to a magnet high school which had a heavy focus on medical professions. We had a medical terminology class in my first year. We did rotations at hospitals and pharmacies in my last year.

 

When my family asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say I wanted to be a doctor. I said that for most of my life. I knew this sounded good — truth is, I never spent that much time thinking about it. Given the environment I was in and the high expectations I had for myself, it seemed as good a guess as any.

 

By the time I graduated from high school, I had somehow managed to get an acceptance letter to a private liberal arts university in Texas. It was the kind of place you don't just stumble into. Looking back this had immense advantages to my growth both as student and a person but, most importantly for me at the time, this meant my average peer knew what they wanted to do with their life and was on a mission to do just that.

 

I struggled during my first semester with a sub 2.0 GPA, but since then I had figured out how to get by (why this happened and what I learned from that experience is enough for an entirely separate post and besides the point of this one). Fast-forward to my third year of university, I was at what felt like a subconscious crossroads. I was deep into a biology degree — 2 and a half years in. Over the course of those past two years, I had taken two 1-credit computer science courses out of curiosity but 99% of my time and energy had been spent trying to keep up with others in my pre-med classes.

 

People who lived and breathed pre-med.

People who couldn't imagine themselves doing anything else after university.

 

I would always ask myself questions like -

 

am I not working hard enough?

am I not smart enough to make this work?

what is it that my peers have that I don't?

 

Meanwhile, when I thought about graduating with a biology degree and the options that I would have coming out of university — I wasn't excited. Even if I did get into med school, the idea of a decade long grind just to have a high-status job that pays well was no longer as appealing as it was before I fully understood what that meant. At the time, I refused to acknowledge these feelings because of a counter-point I couldn't reconcile — that the only reason I felt this way was because I was struggling to keep up.

 

I couldn't shake the feeling that I didn't belong — that I had just been telling myself what other people wanted to hear — but at the same time I was afraid that acting on this feeling would mean that I had failed.

 

The truth was that I loved every minute I spent in those two computer science courses. The work didn't feel like work. It didn't feel like I had to put in double the hours just to keep up. After months of deliberation, I realized something important—

 

Your ability to succeed in any given venture is not solely determined by discipline. Passion — the feeling you get when your heart reminds you that you can't figure it all out with your head — plays a larger role in your willingness to be dedicated, and thus your likelihood to succeed, than common advice tells you it does.

 

I realized I had been pretending to be someone else for someone else. I still remember where I was and how I felt when I called my dad and told him I had made up my mind.

 

“As long as it's done in 4 years — that was the deal.”

 

I booked a meeting with the chair of the computer science department and we spent over an hour determining what my schedule would need to look like moving forward for that to even be a possibility. And — by luck or will or maybe according to a plan the universe already had — it was possible.

 

I still remember how excited I was to hear it — how freeing it felt to no longer have to play catch up in a game I wasn't even sure I cared to win.

 

So, the questions I pose to you:

 

Are you being honest with yourself?

Are you trying to make something you don't care about work for the sake of someone else?

 

If so, you're playing a losing game. To accomplish things you can be proud of is not simply a matter of focusing more and working harder. It's important to remember two things:

 

The things you are most passionate about are also likely to be the things you are the best at.

 

Just because something is difficult to achieve does not mean that it's worthwhile for you to achieve it.

 

It's possible that the opportunities best suited for you are hidden behind lies you're telling yourself for the sake of others. You're asking questions you already know the answer to. Stop second guessing yourself. Deep down, you already know what it is you're truly meant to pursue.

 

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