Someone will only play a certain role in someone else’s life.
As someone who is naturally accommodating, I used to try to be everything for everyone. In gatherings, I would feel a huge responsibility to make sure everyone was comfortable and having fun. In business, I tried to be the finance team, the marketing team, the creative team, even the warehouse manager—all at once. Even at home, I tried to be a good daughter, a good daughter-in-law, a good sister-in-law, and a good mother that everyone liked.
In short, I was a people pleaser.
But in 2024, I learned an important truth:
We can't make everyone happy—and it’s not our job to do so.
People in our lives are like passengers at a train station. We may cross paths, but we are only a small part of each other’s journeys. Their happiness, their achievements, their life decisions—are their own responsibility, not ours.
Now I realize I should stop trying to fix everything and everyone.
Unfortunately, many people—including me—are born with an urge to "fix" things that they don't feel right. We think it's our duty to correct everything. But that’s why life often feels tiring, heavy, and frustrating. The truth is:
We don't always have the power to change how people think.
And more importantly, we don’t have to.
Everyone’s life is their own responsibility, just like ours is ours.
Everything That We Have Today Is Actually Everything That We've Always Wanted
Without realizing it, everything we have today is something we have always wanted or something that points toward our true goals. Even the hardships, mistakes, and small detours are parts of a road we subconsciously chose.
Our brains are constantly manifesting. Even when we’re avoiding something, deep down, we are still moving toward the thing that we truly want. Every good and bad event is simply the consequence of the choices we've made.
Humans are amazing in how, in just a fraction of a second, we can calculate risks and benefits without even realizing it. In the end, we naturally choose what benefits us in the long run—even if we don't fully understand it at the time.
Think about it:
When we fight with our partner, maybe deep down we are trying to fix an uncomfortable situation.
When we quit a job, maybe it's because we know deep inside it's not the future we want.
Even when we exhaust ourselves trying to please people around us, part of us is actually finds satisfaction in doing it because we want to be useful.
If we don't want to help our parents do something, but end up doing it, in the surface it seems like we don't want it, but on the deeper layer that is actually our choice because we want to see our parents happy.
Even if we are in a misery, having an uncomfortable job, always say "YES" to people we don't like, or being in a toxic relationship. We feel trapped and feel like it is life playing game on us. Serve us with a destiny that we do not want. But actually it is us who unconsciously choose to be in that situation, because change is scarier. We scared of the unfamiliarity.
Our Nervous System will always choose a Familiar Hell over an Unfamiliar Heaven.
Our choices, even the ones we don’t fully understand, are always leading us toward the life we truly want.
Our Life Assets is Limited
Every human is born with the same basic assets—'time' and 'energy'.
Time and energy are like water and fertilizer for a growing plant. Where we choose to invest them decides what plants that we will grow:
Knowledge
Career
Wealth
Family bonds
Relationships
Business success
Charity
Kindness
etc
There’s no right or wrong. With over a billion brain cells, each human can create millions of different ways of thinking—and that’s why every person’s life looks different.
But the basics are the same: We grow what we nurture. The more things we try to grow at once, the slower everything grows. The fewer and more focused our goals, the faster and stronger they will bloom.
Life is a lot like playing cards.
Every time you pick a card, you must throw another away. You can’t hold everything at once. If you want to win with a Straight Flush or a Full House at the end of the game, you have to let go of many small, unnecessary cards along the way.
In the end, whether we win life with a strong hand—or get stuck with a handful of scattered cards—is entirely up to us.