Stewarding Your Life Well

By Stephanie May Wilson

“You can’t get married in sandals,” the saleswoman admonished. “No, no, these are perfect,” she said as she pressed the shoes into my hands. “These are the ones. I’m sure of it.”

I was glad she was sure, because I certainly wasn’t. I was sure that I was ready to get out of there, though.

My mom and I had been shopping for hours, and I’d been wedding planning for months. I was hungry and tired and sick of making decisions, so even though these shoes looked nothing like me and didn’t fit the way I wanted to look and feel on my wedding day, I took them to the counter, and $175 later, they were mine. “It’s fine,” I told myself. “I’ll get used to them. They’ll be fine.”

But I didn’t get used to them. In fact, every time I saw them—taunting me from the corner of my bedroom—I disliked them even more. I was mad at those shoes, and even more, I was mad at myself. I was mad that I didn’t speak up for myself, mad that I let her talk me into something I didn’t want, mad that I let a stranger have so much influence over such an important day in my life. And the fact that the dumb shoes were so expensive made me feel even worse.

A few days later, still mad, I called my best friend. “I should just keep them, shouldn’t I? The saleslady said it was weird to get married in sandals, and she’s right. Right? I need to just get over it. It’s not like anyone will see them anyway.”

“No!” she said. “Stephanie, this is your wedding day. It should look and feel like you. Who cares what this random stranger thinks is weird? If you want to get married in sandals, do it.”

She was right, and so I did.

I returned the awful wedding shoes, spent that money instead on a gorgeous hand-stitched sash to go around my dress, and bought a pair of simple gold sandals. I felt beautiful on my wedding day, and my feet didn’t hurt one bit. No regrets.

It’s Your Life

I wish I could say the same for every other major life decision I’ve made. I wish I could say that I never again let someone else’s vision for my life overpower my own. But I’ve done it again—more than once—and I’m sure you have too. Because if you’re anything like me, it can be hard to hear your own voice, let alone trust it and follow where it leads. Or maybe part of you balks at the idea that you can (and even should!) get what you want in life.

We’re so used to hearing statements like “Life is hard,” “Life’s not fair,” and “That’s just how it is,” that it can feel silly and unrealistic to think it’s even possible to create a life you love, let alone that it’s something you should spend time striving to achieve. We don’t want to be spoiled or entitled or naive, thinking life will always be fun and easy or expecting to get everything we want.

But that’s not what we’re talking about here, because that’s not actually what you’re looking for, is it?

You’re not looking for a perfect life, but you are looking for a great one. You know that the best, most important things in life require grit and perseverance and courage—and you’re up for the challenge (on most days, that is!). You are smart and resilient. You do hard things. You’re not looking for a magic pill or an instant fix, but you might need some help moving forward, because sometimes you feel stuck or lost—or maybe both.

Maybe you’re about to have a big birthday and you’re not where you thought you’d be by this point in your life. Maybe you’re making a massive decision—you’re swimming in lists of pros and cons and still don’t know what to do. Maybe you know exactly what you want in life but you don’t know how to get it, or maybe you have no clue what you want, but you know you don’t want what you’re “supposed to want” and the conflict raging inside you as a result is positively consuming.

I’ve walked hundreds of thousands of women through some of the biggest decisions of their lives, so I know that when you’re in the middle of a major turning point, every decision feels critical. Your life feels like a carefully built but teetering tower, and you’re afraid that if you breathe wrong—or, heaven forbid, sneeze—you’re going to send all the pieces crashing to the ground and ruin your life forever. But even more than being afraid you’re going to get it wrong, you just really want to get it right.

You know you get one life, one shot, and you don’t want to waste it! You want to build a life that’s fulfilling, a life you’re proud of, a life you’re excited to wake up to every day (or at least most days!). You want to make the most of your life—in big, sweeping, world-changing ways, but also in the small, day-to-day, “this is too good to miss” moments.

You want to create a life you love—and that’s a good thing.

Friend, it’s not silly or entitled or unrealistic to want to love your life. It’s a beautiful thing to pursue a life of meaning and joy—and it’s something within reach.

Do Your Shoes Fit?

Life is too short to wear shoes that don’t fit—whether your feet, your style, or your life—especially when there are seven hundred gazillion other options to choose from. It’s not selfish to want to find shoes that fit—in fact, it’s silly not to. The same is true about life.

In some areas of life, you get extra points for “sucking it up”—for accepting a difficult situation and making the most of it. So you push through, you endure, you stick it out, you finish the race, and you’re better for it. But that’s not always the case. Good things aren’t always hard, and hard things aren’t always good. Not every difficult and uncomfortable path has a prize at the end of it. There’s simply no prize for getting married in shoes you hate. Similarly, there’s no prize for dedicating your time and energy to building a life you don’t actually want to live—and thereby missing out on the life you really do want.

You don’t always get to choose your circumstances, of course, and we all have day-to-day responsibilities we can’t neglect. But almost always, we have choices available to us that would help our lives fit us a little bit better. That’s what Create a Life You Love is about. It’s about being a good steward of the gift that is your life, about doing what you can with what you’ve been given. You can’t control every element of your life, but there is so much you can do—and your life will be so much better if you participate in creating it.

I don’t care what you choose. I just care that you choose.

________

Adapted from Create a Life You Love: How to Quiet Outside Voices So You Can Finally Hear Your Own, by Stephanie May Wilson. Click here to learn more about his book.

As women, we're often told that we're entitled or unrealistic when we want to create a life we love. We start hearing this message from a very early age, and by the time we're old enough to know what we want, we've also been taught to doubt our instincts and to see selfishness in all our longings.

This book is the antidote to those voices ... and the way forward.

Writer, speaker, and podcaster Stephanie May Wilson has helped thousands of women shrug off the pressure of what they think their lives are supposed to look like and take on the next big decision or life transition with intentionality and confidence.

Create a Life You Love is a warm, passionate guide on how you can rediscover your own authority and build a life you're finally excited to live. You'll learn how to:

• Define yourself on your own terms by setting aside societal pressures that tell you who you're supposed to be.
• Feel empowered to make your next big decisions with confidence and clarity.
• Build security and peace in both who you are and the season you're in.

Through stories, exercises, and hard-won wisdom, Create a Life You Love will help you untangle your own expectations from the expectations of others and get inspired to at last pursue a life that you're excited to wake up to each day.

Stephanie May Wilson, author and top podcaster, is on a mission to be who she needed when she was younger—walking women through life's biggest decisions and transitions. Through her books, podcast, and online courses, Stephanie helps women take the pressure off of what their lives are "supposed" to look like, figure out where they actually want to go in life, and take the steps to get there.

Stephanie has been featured on NBC, the Anthropologie blog, and Relevant magazine. She has also been a longtime blog contributor for CNBC's Nightly Business Report, Darling magazine, and the Christian Mingle blog.

When she's not writing, speaking, or recording a podcast episode, Stephanie is usually packing for a global adventure with her husband, Carl, laughing with her close tribe of girlfriends, or curled up in her Nashville home with her twin toddlers, Annie and Quinn.