YOU had Plan A. You Got Plan B. Here’s Why Plan B Is A GOOD Thing. ｜｜ Accept What You REALLY Want!
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Summary
When you go to college to figure out what you want at a young age, it can make you feel like if you don t follow through with that plan, you ve done something wrong. You ve wasted your time and your money. And coming to terms with doing something that would actually make you happy, and not just doing something because you ve already sunk a lot of time and effort into it, can be really hard. So today we re talking about how to accept what you really want even if it s a change from what you originally wanted.
Transcript
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Hello Classic Crew and welcome to today's video where we're going to be talking about how to
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accept what you really want. When you go to college for something at a young age it can really make
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you feel like if you don't follow through with that you've done something wrong. You've failed,
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you've wasted money, you've wasted your time, and I'm actually a proponent of going to college with
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a certain thing in mind. I don't think going to college to figure out what you want is a great
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idea because it can put you in a lot of debt and I don't think that's the best plan but I also think
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that you're young when you go to college so trying to figure out what you want at that age things
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might end up changing and if they do that's okay. And coming to terms with doing something that would
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actually really make you happy and not just doing something because you've already sunk a lot of time
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into it can be really hard to come to terms with. So today I really want to talk about how to accept
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what you really want even if it's a change from what you thought you originally wanted. So let's
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get into it. So before we start this video I kind of want to clarify what happiness means. I don't mean
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oh this makes me happy in a short-term kind of way and that kind of self-care thing that can just
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not really be what a deeper happiness means. Happiness is fulfillment. Happiness is living for a mission.
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When I'm talking about happiness I'm talking about looking for a deeper fulfillment. I'm talking about
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really living out your purpose and your mission and not just okay I'm gonna do things that make me
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happy but it's not really a long-term happiness. It's not something that actually gives me meaning.
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So with that in mind I wanted to talk a little bit about my story. So when I went to the Manhattan
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School of Music I had already been at school for four years for opera and I ended up being at the
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Manhattan School of Music for another three years and I had spent a lot of time pursuing my operatic
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career. I had planned everything out. I had an idea of exactly what it would look like. I wanted to go
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to a young artist program if I could get into one. A young artist program is essentially like an
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internship at an opera house where you're given roles. You're also taught a few things while you're
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there and they give you kind of a stipend to live off of. I had plans that would kind of turn into a
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career and I dreamed about being a world-renowned opera singer. Of course an opera career is not
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at all guaranteed. You can sink a ton of time and a ton of money into practicing, into coaching, into
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lessons and you still may not succeed. It's not like you're going to apply for a job and you'd stay at
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that job for 10 years. You're constantly shifting and moving around and even then you don't know that
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you're going to have a successful career. When I met Jacob I actually had to reconsider everything.
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Now that's not because Jacob was pressuring me or I thought that I needed to quit my job and become
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a full-time traditional housewife. It wasn't anything like that. I went to the Aspen Music
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Festival about two weeks after Jacob and I started dating and we knew very quickly that we were
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probably going to get married. We had already had those discussions and the Aspen Music Festival is
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one of the best music festivals in the world. It's an incredible program and I was singing a main role in
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the main stage opera. It was a huge accomplishment and a pinnacle of my career up to that point and
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when I sang there I assumed that that was going to be something incredible. That I was going to feel
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amazing and it was one of the hardest summers of my life. I felt really lonely. I felt like I had just
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met this man that I was absolutely in love with and now I wasn't going to be with him for 10 weeks
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and I didn't feel like my operatic career was outweighing the rest of my life. And then all of
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a sudden all of these questions started pouring into my mind. I would say I almost had an existential
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crisis. I wasn't sure that I was pursuing opera for the right reasons. Was I doing it because of my
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own vanity? Was it something that I was doing because it was my mission or just because I wanted to sing and
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that was really it? Was there more to it than that? And then outside of those huge enormous questions I
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didn't feel like it necessarily made sense to me because with opera when you're performing professionally
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and that's your main job you are traveling a ton. You are traveling for three to six weeks at a time
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and very consistently. And I had to ask myself did I want to be away from the man that I loved
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that much? Did I want to be away from my future children that much? Did I want to have the instability
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of this career where I didn't even know if I would succeed? And even if I did succeed you're only really
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kind of booked out two to three years in advance and after that you don't know. And for a family life
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that can be really really difficult. For my Judaism it would have been really difficult because I
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couldn't really say okay well I can't perform at all this season because there are Jewish holidays.
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It was just a really complicated question and it was a really emotional time for me especially because
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I was also right in the beginning of a relationship with my now husband and I was also asking these huge
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questions about the trajectory of my life. I felt like I was letting everyone down. I felt like I had
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failed. I felt like I had wasted my time. I had wasted my effort. I had wasted my money and that I
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couldn't step away from opera in the initial way that I had planned to pursue it because it would not
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be right. Even though I could feel and I could really start to feel it inside that it would make
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me happier to step away. It wasn't until I realized that pursuing opera in the way that I had initially
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intended wouldn't make me happy in the long run that I could actually start to reconsider what I wanted
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from my future and what I wanted from my life. I realized that I wanted to pursue something in my
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career that felt like my mission that I could make a positive change in the world and I also realized
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that I wanted to have flexibility so that I could be at home with my kids when I wanted to that I could
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be at home with my husband instead of traveling all the time and I realized that it was okay to change my
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mind and start to accept what I really wanted. I wanted to continue to sing. I wanted to continue
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to pursue opera but in a whole new way. I wanted to have more control over my career because again
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with opera things are so up in the air and I wanted to have more time at home. I wanted to have more time
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with my husband and I wanted to have more time with my future children. I think a lot of the time it's
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really hard for women to accept that they put all of this time and effort into a career that may not
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end up making them happy in the long run. I have a few friends that have definitely felt that way that
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felt guilty for wanting to take a step back from their careers because they didn't necessarily feel
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like it was working for them at the time but they also felt like maybe it was wrong that they wanted
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to actually pursue what was going to make them happier. But it's okay to change your mind. It's okay
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to recognize that you may have invested time and money in something in an education in a certain area
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that may not be pursued exactly as you had expected but will still come back in some way in
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your life. Education is never wasted. Any knowledge that you have gained is going to come back in
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certain ways in your life that you may not even have expected. For me of course I still sing of course
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those lessons are super important to my operatic career but I also use a ton of lessons that I got
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from my operatic career throughout my life. The fact that I can take criticism pretty well
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opera is an area where people are going to offer you criticism not couched in niceties. They're just
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going to tell you if something is bad or if something is wrong and you just have to be able
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to say okay I can use this I can't use this and just kind of pick through it. That's something I
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really learned going through an operatic education. But accepting that you are allowed to grow and change
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and want something different is the first step to accepting what it is that you really want and what's
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really going to bring you happiness. Let's talk about two different scenarios. Let's talk about a
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woman who went to college, got a grad degree, and is pursuing a really high-powered position. Now she
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has a great career, she got married, she loves it, she loves her job, she loves her work-life balance,
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and then she has a child and realizes that maybe she doesn't want to work that many hours. She doesn't
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want to have this super high-powered career because she doesn't get to spend as much time with her kids
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and with her husband. It's okay for her to change her mind. It's okay that you were a career woman
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and now you want to change your path. That is totally fine. It doesn't make you a failure. It
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doesn't mean you wasted your time. It just means that now something else is going to make you happier
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and you want to make a change. And that's not to say that that necessarily has to happen. It just
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means that it could happen and if it does that's okay. Your responsibilities have changed and maybe
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you're pulled to want to be at home more and you personally feel that. It's not saying that you
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have to do that but that's sort of what you feel inside would make you happier. That's okay. You're
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not a failure. You didn't make any mistakes. You just changed. Number two, let's say there's a woman who
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was always raised with the idea that she would be a stay-at-home mom and she got married, she had a
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child, and you know what? She didn't really love being a stay-at-home that much. She liked the idea of kind
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of splitting her time a little bit more and maybe it makes sense for you guys to get a nanny and
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delegate some of the work to her while you go to work. It's okay if staying at home didn't work out
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for you and you think that you would be happier in a situation where you are working and you are
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outside of the home more often. And maybe it does make more sense for you to be the earner and for
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husband to stay at home and that works for you guys and you are happier with that scenario. You can
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decide and figure out how that balance works for you. That is all part of life's process and if
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that is what brings you happiness and if staying at home doesn't work for you full-time, that's okay.
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You can accept what you really want. The thing is that life is long and people can change their
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preferences. You can think one thing when you're 21 and think an entirely different thing when you're 35.
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Nothing is wasted. Your time was well spent because it will come back in certain ways and you may not
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know exactly how yet, but that's okay. You can do what's going to make you happy because you have
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to figure out what actually does work for you. So for me, I knew that pursuing an opera career full-time
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just wouldn't make me happy and wouldn't bring me the fulfillment that I was looking for. Finding
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the flexibility of a job that felt like it was my mission, that I was bringing something good into the
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world while also giving me the flexibility to stay at home and to be there for my husband and to be
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there for my future children. All of that really does bring me happiness and that's okay even though
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I had initially planned on something entirely different. So I really wanted to share that with
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you guys because I think part of being a classic woman is knowing what you want, finding your mission.
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I've talked about this in a few of my videos that it's really important to figure out what it is that
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you want and to pursue it. So I think that the process of figuring it out, you have to have some
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grace with yourself because it's not always going to be smooth transitions but it doesn't mean that
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it's not worth doing. It's not worth putting in the work to figure out what is going to make you happy
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even if it's not something that you initially expected. Let me know in the comments below if you've
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ever gone through a situation like this where you had planned to do one thing and then ended up doing
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something entirely different. I'd love to hear your stories. Thank you guys so much for watching today's
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video. Please subscribe to my channel and blog if you haven't already. Head over to my Twitter,
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