When Julie was a child, she was a very b...

When Julie was a child, she was a very big fan of animals. As a result, 36 she ever heard growing up was “Julie, you should be a vet. You’re going to be a great vet. That’s what you should do.”  37  when she got to the Ohio State University, she started studying to be a vet.

A scholarship allowed her to spend her  38  year studying abroad in Manchester, England. Away from the family  39  back home, she found herself one day sitting at her desk, surrounded by biology books and staring out the window, when it suddenly hit her: “I’m in total  40 . I don’t want to be a vet!”

 41  she thought back over all the things she’d done in her life and what had made her happy. And then it hit her—it was all of the youth leadership conferences that she had volunteered  42 , and the communications and leadership courses she had taken as elective courses back at Ohio State. “How could I have been so  43 ? Here I am in my fourth year at school and just finally realizing I’m on the  44  path. I just never took the time to  45  it until now, ” she thought.

Inspired by her new  46 , Julie spent the rest of her year in England taking courses in communications and media studies. When  47  to Ohio State, she was eventually able to  48  the administration to let her create her own program in “leadership studies”,  49  it took her 2 years longer to finally graduate. She  50  to become a senior management consultant in leadership training and development for the Pentagon. She  51  founded a drug-prevention organization that  52  the message “Lead your own life with the skill and the  53  to say no.”

So, never live someone else’s  54 . If you limit your  55  only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want.