We’ve just finished commencement season. At some point in our lives, most of us have sat in the audience of a commencement speech thinking that everything good in our life was about to start. 

But then time passes and maybe 5 or 10 or 20 years later we can find ourselves looking around and thinking: Is this it? Is this what being an adult was gonna be like? Is this how it was supposed to turn out? Most of us had big plans to change the world, but maybe after a few decades, it just feels like the world changed us instead.

I think the problem is our expectations.  I think commencement speeches and the happily-ever-after we see in the movies and on social media are all selling us the idea that life is supposed to be big and magical and exciting, and you are supposed to be happy and successful and gorgeous and killing it all the time. 

So today I wanted to give a kind of “anti-commencement speech” and reframe your expectations about what life is supposed to be like, so that you can feel better about yourself and your very ordinary, normal human experience, and hopefully answer the question, “Is this it?” along the way.