Classically Abby - YOU had Plan A. You Got Plan B. Here’s Why Plan B Is A GOOD Thing. ｜｜ Accept What You REALLY Want!

00:00:00.080 Hello Classic Crew and welcome to today's video where we're going to be talking about how to

00:00:05.200 accept what you really want. When you go to college for something at a young age it can really make

00:00:13.840 you feel like if you don't follow through with that you've done something wrong. You've failed,

00:00:19.280 you've wasted money, you've wasted your time, and I'm actually a proponent of going to college with

00:00:24.960 a certain thing in mind. I don't think going to college to figure out what you want is a great

00:00:28.640 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

00:00:34.400 that you're young when you go to college so trying to figure out what you want at that age things

00:00:39.840 might end up changing and if they do that's okay. And coming to terms with doing something that would

00:00:45.920 actually really make you happy and not just doing something because you've already sunk a lot of time

00:00:50.960 into it can be really hard to come to terms with. So today I really want to talk about how to accept

00:00:57.040 what you really want even if it's a change from what you thought you originally wanted. So let's

00:01:02.480 get into it. So before we start this video I kind of want to clarify what happiness means. I don't mean

00:01:08.640 oh this makes me happy in a short-term kind of way and that kind of self-care thing that can just

00:01:14.560 not really be what a deeper happiness means. Happiness is fulfillment. Happiness is living for a mission.

00:01:22.160 When I'm talking about happiness I'm talking about looking for a deeper fulfillment. I'm talking about

00:01:28.240 really living out your purpose and your mission and not just okay I'm gonna do things that make me

00:01:33.920 happy but it's not really a long-term happiness. It's not something that actually gives me meaning.

00:01:40.240 So with that in mind I wanted to talk a little bit about my story. So when I went to the Manhattan

00:01:45.600 School of Music I had already been at school for four years for opera and I ended up being at the

00:01:50.480 Manhattan School of Music for another three years and I had spent a lot of time pursuing my operatic

00:01:56.720 career. I had planned everything out. I had an idea of exactly what it would look like. I wanted to go

00:02:02.160 to a young artist program if I could get into one. A young artist program is essentially like an

00:02:06.480 internship at an opera house where you're given roles. You're also taught a few things while you're

00:02:10.960 there and they give you kind of a stipend to live off of. I had plans that would kind of turn into a

00:02:17.680 career and I dreamed about being a world-renowned opera singer. Of course an opera career is not

00:02:24.000 at all guaranteed. You can sink a ton of time and a ton of money into practicing, into coaching, into

00:02:30.320 lessons and you still may not succeed. It's not like you're going to apply for a job and you'd stay at

00:02:35.520 that job for 10 years. You're constantly shifting and moving around and even then you don't know that

00:02:40.400 you're going to have a successful career. When I met Jacob I actually had to reconsider everything.

00:02:46.800 Now that's not because Jacob was pressuring me or I thought that I needed to quit my job and become

00:02:52.000 a full-time traditional housewife. It wasn't anything like that. I went to the Aspen Music

00:02:57.040 Festival about two weeks after Jacob and I started dating and we knew very quickly that we were

00:03:02.400 probably going to get married. We had already had those discussions and the Aspen Music Festival is

00:03:07.680 one of the best music festivals in the world. It's an incredible program and I was singing a main role in

00:03:15.360 the main stage opera. It was a huge accomplishment and a pinnacle of my career up to that point and

00:03:22.800 when I sang there I assumed that that was going to be something incredible. That I was going to feel

00:03:28.240 amazing and it was one of the hardest summers of my life. I felt really lonely. I felt like I had just

00:03:34.480 met this man that I was absolutely in love with and now I wasn't going to be with him for 10 weeks

00:03:40.640 and I didn't feel like my operatic career was outweighing the rest of my life. And then all of

00:03:48.240 a sudden all of these questions started pouring into my mind. I would say I almost had an existential

00:03:53.600 crisis. I wasn't sure that I was pursuing opera for the right reasons. Was I doing it because of my

00:03:59.280 own vanity? Was it something that I was doing because it was my mission or just because I wanted to sing and

00:04:05.600 that was really it? Was there more to it than that? And then outside of those huge enormous questions I

00:04:12.160 didn't feel like it necessarily made sense to me because with opera when you're performing professionally

00:04:17.280 and that's your main job you are traveling a ton. You are traveling for three to six weeks at a time

00:04:24.000 and very consistently. And I had to ask myself did I want to be away from the man that I loved

00:04:29.520 that much? Did I want to be away from my future children that much? Did I want to have the instability

00:04:35.920 of this career where I didn't even know if I would succeed? And even if I did succeed you're only really

00:04:41.600 kind of booked out two to three years in advance and after that you don't know. And for a family life

00:04:47.200 that can be really really difficult. For my Judaism it would have been really difficult because I

00:04:51.760 couldn't really say okay well I can't perform at all this season because there are Jewish holidays. 1.00

00:04:56.640 It was just a really complicated question and it was a really emotional time for me especially because

00:05:04.960 I was also right in the beginning of a relationship with my now husband and I was also asking these huge

00:05:12.080 questions about the trajectory of my life. I felt like I was letting everyone down. I felt like I had

00:05:19.920 failed. I felt like I had wasted my time. I had wasted my effort. I had wasted my money and that I

00:05:26.080 couldn't step away from opera in the initial way that I had planned to pursue it because it would not

00:05:33.200 be right. Even though I could feel and I could really start to feel it inside that it would make

00:05:40.160 me happier to step away. It wasn't until I realized that pursuing opera in the way that I had initially

00:05:46.240 intended wouldn't make me happy in the long run that I could actually start to reconsider what I wanted

00:05:53.280 from my future and what I wanted from my life. I realized that I wanted to pursue something in my

00:05:57.840 career that felt like my mission that I could make a positive change in the world and I also realized

00:06:04.240 that I wanted to have flexibility so that I could be at home with my kids when I wanted to that I could

00:06:09.200 be at home with my husband instead of traveling all the time and I realized that it was okay to change my

00:06:15.120 mind and start to accept what I really wanted. I wanted to continue to sing. I wanted to continue

00:06:21.120 to pursue opera but in a whole new way. I wanted to have more control over my career because again

00:06:26.320 with opera things are so up in the air and I wanted to have more time at home. I wanted to have more time

00:06:31.360 with my husband and I wanted to have more time with my future children. I think a lot of the time it's

00:06:35.840 really hard for women to accept that they put all of this time and effort into a career that may not 0.72

00:06:40.720 end up making them happy in the long run. I have a few friends that have definitely felt that way that

00:06:45.760 felt guilty for wanting to take a step back from their careers because they didn't necessarily feel

00:06:51.440 like it was working for them at the time but they also felt like maybe it was wrong that they wanted

00:06:56.720 to actually pursue what was going to make them happier. But it's okay to change your mind. It's okay

00:07:02.800 to recognize that you may have invested time and money in something in an education in a certain area

00:07:08.160 that may not be pursued exactly as you had expected but will still come back in some way in

00:07:13.760 your life. Education is never wasted. Any knowledge that you have gained is going to come back in

00:07:19.680 certain ways in your life that you may not even have expected. For me of course I still sing of course

00:07:24.960 those lessons are super important to my operatic career but I also use a ton of lessons that I got

00:07:31.760 from my operatic career throughout my life. The fact that I can take criticism pretty well

00:07:37.920 opera is an area where people are going to offer you criticism not couched in niceties. They're just

00:07:43.040 going to tell you if something is bad or if something is wrong and you just have to be able

00:07:47.120 to say okay I can use this I can't use this and just kind of pick through it. That's something I

00:07:52.320 really learned going through an operatic education. But accepting that you are allowed to grow and change

00:07:59.520 and want something different is the first step to accepting what it is that you really want and what's

00:08:05.520 really going to bring you happiness. Let's talk about two different scenarios. Let's talk about a

00:08:10.560 woman who went to college, got a grad degree, and is pursuing a really high-powered position. Now she 1.00

00:08:15.760 has a great career, she got married, she loves it, she loves her job, she loves her work-life balance,

00:08:21.680 and then she has a child and realizes that maybe she doesn't want to work that many hours. She doesn't 1.00

00:08:26.720 want to have this super high-powered career because she doesn't get to spend as much time with her kids 1.00

00:08:31.280 and with her husband. It's okay for her to change her mind. It's okay that you were a career woman

00:08:37.600 and now you want to change your path. That is totally fine. It doesn't make you a failure. It

00:08:42.720 doesn't mean you wasted your time. It just means that now something else is going to make you happier

00:08:48.240 and you want to make a change. And that's not to say that that necessarily has to happen. It just

00:08:52.720 means that it could happen and if it does that's okay. Your responsibilities have changed and maybe

00:08:58.560 you're pulled to want to be at home more and you personally feel that. It's not saying that you

00:09:04.240 have to do that but that's sort of what you feel inside would make you happier. That's okay. You're

00:09:09.600 not a failure. You didn't make any mistakes. You just changed. Number two, let's say there's a woman who

00:09:16.080 was always raised with the idea that she would be a stay-at-home mom and she got married, she had a

00:09:20.960 child, and you know what? She didn't really love being a stay-at-home that much. She liked the idea of kind

00:09:26.480 of splitting her time a little bit more and maybe it makes sense for you guys to get a nanny and 0.99

00:09:30.720 delegate some of the work to her while you go to work. It's okay if staying at home didn't work out

00:09:36.960 for you and you think that you would be happier in a situation where you are working and you are

00:09:42.320 outside of the home more often. And maybe it does make more sense for you to be the earner and for

00:09:47.680 husband to stay at home and that works for you guys and you are happier with that scenario. You can

00:09:53.360 decide and figure out how that balance works for you. That is all part of life's process and if

00:09:59.680 that is what brings you happiness and if staying at home doesn't work for you full-time, that's okay.

00:10:06.240 You can accept what you really want. The thing is that life is long and people can change their

00:10:11.920 preferences. You can think one thing when you're 21 and think an entirely different thing when you're 35.

00:10:17.680 Nothing is wasted. Your time was well spent because it will come back in certain ways and you may not

00:10:22.960 know exactly how yet, but that's okay. You can do what's going to make you happy because you have

00:10:29.600 to figure out what actually does work for you. So for me, I knew that pursuing an opera career full-time

00:10:37.520 just wouldn't make me happy and wouldn't bring me the fulfillment that I was looking for. Finding

00:10:43.200 the flexibility of a job that felt like it was my mission, that I was bringing something good into the

00:10:48.800 world while also giving me the flexibility to stay at home and to be there for my husband and to be

00:10:54.560 there for my future children. All of that really does bring me happiness and that's okay even though

00:11:01.440 I had initially planned on something entirely different. So I really wanted to share that with

00:11:05.680 you guys because I think part of being a classic woman is knowing what you want, finding your mission.

00:11:10.240 I've talked about this in a few of my videos that it's really important to figure out what it is that

00:11:14.800 you want and to pursue it. So I think that the process of figuring it out, you have to have some

00:11:20.080 grace with yourself because it's not always going to be smooth transitions but it doesn't mean that

00:11:24.800 it's not worth doing. It's not worth putting in the work to figure out what is going to make you happy

00:11:30.480 even if it's not something that you initially expected. Let me know in the comments below if you've

00:11:35.280 ever gone through a situation like this where you had planned to do one thing and then ended up doing

00:11:39.680 something entirely different. I'd love to hear your stories. Thank you guys so much for watching today's

00:11:44.640 video. Please subscribe to my channel and blog if you haven't already. Head over to my Twitter,

00:11:49.440 Instagram, and Facebook and follow me there. Hit that notification bell to get notified of all my

00:11:53.600 new videos. Hit that like button. Please head over to classicallyabbey.locals.com if you'd like to

00:11:58.560 support my channel, see more of this content, and be part of our community. And I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye!

00:12:14.640 Bye!

Classically Abby - September 18, 2020

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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