Live your dreams…but choose carefully as you can’t live them all.

If I hear about an event taking place, I want to go. If I hear that someone is a designer, I’d love to have been a designer. If I hear that someone is a singer, I’d love to have been a singer. If I hear that someone is a genetic researcher studying the cystic fibrosis genome, then I’d love to have been a genetic researcher studying the cystic fibrosis genome.

I’d love to do a lot of things.

No country that I don’t want to see, few experiences that I don’t want to try.

Yet, I can’t do them all. I chose to do medicine and that requires-even at its most basic level-quite a lot of commitment. And I chose to go to the gym to keep fit.
So If I want to learn to speak Spanish (which I do) then I would need to invest less in going to the gym. Only I don’t want to get any less fit.
If I want to start running more (which I do), then I would need to exchange a weights class for a running group. Only I don’t want to get weaker and fall behind in said weights class.

Life is full of choices. And it’s impossible to aspire to achieve everything.

I’ve accepted that I will live my life as a jack of all trades and skim the surface of a variety of experiences rather than investing and emerging within just a few. And it’s taken the 32 years of my life to accept that this is how I want to live.

Social media is littered with images of men and women, who clearly work out, are likely strict with what they eat, offering inspiring messages such as ‘live all your dreams,’ and ‘you can achieve anything.’

This is sadly just not true.

The images we see are of someone who has had to sacrifice daily to achieve the way they look. And that is their choice.

Time is finite and we need to stop being so hard on ourselves for feeling that we are unable to master it all.