Are You the Boss of Me?

It surprises me when people give me advice on how I should live my life. No matter how well meaning they might be or how long they’ve known me, no other person knows everything about me. I didn’t always feel this way. In high school when my mother told me I should not take the college course program available and that I should just stick to business courses, I took her advice. After high school graduation and getting fired from my first two secretarial jobs, I realized I shouldn’t have listened to my mother’s advice.

Although there is nothing wrong with taking aptitude tests, personality tests, or speaking to career counselors, no one can ever know everything about another person. These are just some of the things I know about me and might share with others: I’m not good with details, I don’t like to work in isolation, I need to be creative, need to feel I’m making a difference in encouraging others to discover what “floats their boats.” There are aspects of the way I look at and organize my life that only I know and don’t want to share. When anyone else tries to impress on me why another way is better for me, I have a responsibility to myself to take a hard look at whether their alternate way will lead me off the path I am really destined to walk.

As a college instructor in Communication for over three decades, becoming certified in personality assessments, and writing several books, I have experience in understanding why it is very arrogant to tell another person what to do with his or her life. Yet we do it to one another all the time especially by those well-meaning parents. Trying to live vicariously through your children never ends well for anyone. The college students in my class have often expressed love and respect for parents and the hesitancy to go against parents’ advice, but often students end up with majors that hold no interest for them. In fact, many times they change majors in their last semesters which only extend their time and additional financial obligations for their parents.

The solution is actually simple: realize that loving another person and truly wanting the best for them does not mean you have the right to control all their life choices. What is important before you can offer any type of guidance to another person? Watching them with unbiased eyes to understand where their interest, skills, and talents lie. When do they receive compliments from others? Is it their writing, artistic, scientific, athletic abilities? The greatest gift you can give another person is the freedom to be all they were meant to be.