Deciding who you want to be, I believe is just as important as who you currently are. Dreams, goals, and ambitions don’t necessarily make up who you are as a person but they make apparent internal desires, motives, and intentions. As a young guy I think about it all the time and I assume most 21 year olds do. Who do I want to be? What do I want to be known for? How will I be remembered?

The early 20’s are some of the most important years of your life, in my opinion, not because of the time that is available to most young adults but because of how moldable you are. You have the freedom of choice. Simply put, it is the time of life when you can make any decision, and should be making decisions. If you aren’t, you are just delaying happiness and/or avoiding the future.

I didn’t say you had to make the right choices (no one ever really knows exactly what is right for them) but by not making up your mind you allow yourself to basically push the pause button. Finding your identity, who you want to be, is a simple trial and error process, it needs choices to be made in order to progress. Choices lead to experience and experience defines our identities.

I’m coming up on finishing another year of school and these past two semesters I have changed my major twice. Now you could look at that I say, “yeah, he can’t make up his mind”, or you can think about it as a process of trial and error. It is through experience that you realize what works and what doesn’t; that’s how identity is made.

I started the year as an “international business” student. That quickly came to a halt as my university cut the major from their business program. That lead me to do some internal retrospection and thought, “hey, maybe I’ll be a doctor.” Sounds cool, right? I get to help people, get super educated, and make a decent paycheck. So I met with a counselor who helped me fill out registration for pre-med classes. A month into grueling science courses I came to the conclusion that maybe being a doctor wasn’t for me. So, I pivoted and leaned into something that I believe I will enjoy a little more. 

So, to put things into perspective, you don’t have to have everything in your life planned out perfectly to achieve want you want to achieve, but you have to allow yourself to enter into the process of self-discovery. Your identity isn’t built by decisions but by the path that your choices take you down.