Read This If You Worry That You'll Never Really Get Your Life Together

Read This If You Worry That You’ll Never Really Get Your Life Together

If you are someone who is worried that they will never get their life together, your fear is clouding your vision.

These words will bring you back to clarity.

If you are someone who is worried that they will never get their life together, it means that despite all of your disbelief, and through all of your confusion, and though you feel so lost in this moment, you still know that there is another life calling to you, and waiting for you.

You know you are meant for more, and capable of more.

If you are someone who is worried about getting their life together, the magnitude of this vision likely keeps you away from the actual work of bringing it together. In becoming so swept up in all that you know you desire, and all that you know you’re meant for, you overlook something vital.

The work of changing your life is subtle.

It happens in small moments — the ones you overlook, the ones that are passing you by right this second.

It means that when you realize you should wear SPF to protect your skin, you wake up and you put on SPF. It means that when you don’t have money to spend, you don’t spend it. It means that when you realize you’re acting irrationally and taking your feelings out on someone who doesn’t deserve it, you stop taking them out on someone who doesn’t deserve it.

It means that when you realize you need a glass of water, you drink a glass of water. It means that when you commit to only checking your email twice each day, you only check your email twice a day. It means that when you know something must be done, you do it, instead of waiting until it’s snowballed into a far bigger problem.

Getting your life together means that you stop avoiding the subtle discomfort of doing what’s not ideal in favor of being able to completely avoid the massive discomfort of realizing that you’re in yet another crisis.

So much of what makes our lives go off the rails is not what comes along and throws us off course, but how we slowly allow ourselves to fall off in the micro-moments that we don’t choose the right thing.

The right thing is very often not a heroic act. It’s never backed by movie music, there’s usually no victory lap, no recognition, and for a while, no reward.

It’s just you, and a choice, and how you make it.

For most of your life, you will be able to get away with not doing a lot of it. You will be able to slide by doing the bare minimum, resorting to what’s comfortable, denying what you need in favor of what you want.

You are a free being and you can choose that.

But then you cannot be surprised when the consequences choose you.

So instead of waking up tomorrow and feeling overwhelmed by how far you are from where you want to be, and how much has to get done, and how deeply you believe you are falling behind, what if you woke up and just figured out the next right step, and then took it? And then figured out the next right step after that, and took it again?

What if your life was no longer a picture you were trying to paint so perfectly but a collection of moments and choices you simply had to allow to build up upon one another? What if you’re not overwhelmed by the mountains you’ve yet to climb, but the fact that you continually delay taking the first steps?

The truth of that matter is that there is no such thing as really having your life together.

There’s no measure at which you’re an adult, at which you’re safe, at which you’ve done it all right.

There is only a life that you are comfortable with, and a life that you are not. A life that you are proud of, and a life that you are not. The difference often comes down not to the big facts about who you are or aren’t, but the little things you do within those ideas and identities that make up your character, the heart of who you are and the soul of what you are yet to be.

The way out is not overhauling your life one day, it’s waking up every day and choosing to figure out the next best thing to do with what you have and where you are, and then doing it.

You will not be able to avoid every challenge, mistake and problem this way, but you will be able to avoid a lot of them.

We spend so much of our lives wondering about the people we might be — how we appear, what we could change, whether we are good or not. We spend so little time actually being those people, actually changing, actually doing what we already know is good.

It’s not as complicated as you want to believe.

A good life is built of tiny, good decisions, made over and over again, until you’re reaping a full harvest of all that you’ve sown.

You are constantly in a process of becoming and unbecoming, but in each moment that we’re given an opportunity to choose differently, we usually revert to the same old familiar habits and choices.

What if, instead of reinventing ourselves from the inside out, we just decided to do one thing right, and then allowed it to unravel and transform the rest?

January Nelson is a writer, editor, and dreamer. She writes about astrology, games, love, relationships, and entertainment. January graduated with an English and Literature degree from Columbia University.