Who remembers this YouTube video series? Great, hilarious stuff from my high school years.

But lately, the words "look at your life, look at your choices" has been running through my head.

I decided to take a look at my life, and take a look at my choices.

Most of them, I'm happy with. But I saw a few things about my attitude, my faith, my dedication to relationships, and I saw the things I wanted to change and improve. I wanted to be a happy person, even in the messiness and complications of life. I wanted to trust God and move forward with things even when I'm scared. I wanted to put time and effort into important relationships, let other ones go. I wanted to make better use of my time, find hobbies, and grow as a person.

It's one thing to post on social media one day that you have seen the light, that you want to clean up and change your life. It's a totally different thing to actually change. To start making different choices, rather than just posting about the "new you."

We all make stupid decisions. We all see the ways to improve and be better.

But we can't complain about the hard things that we're dealing with, when they're directly a result of our choices. Sometimes things happen that we have absolutely no control over. People have family issues, mental or physical health issues, financial situations, struggles with relationships, etc. These are all valid, and are things we have to figure out how to cope with. A lot of the time, however, we make decisions that lead us to be unhappy. We decide to get in with the wrong crowd, date the wrong person, make wrong choices, be lazy, ignore the support or help from other people.

We decide we know best, or that this is just who we are, nothing will change it.

That's all a lie.

I know the feeling of losing control. Of wondering if you are in the driver's seat and if you really are the one making decisions. I know the feeling of running on auto pilot and wondering if you can ever snap out of that.

And oh my friends, you can. Look at your life. Look at your choices.

See what choices work and which ones don't. Which choices are leading you to be a better person, and which ones aren't.

There's no reason to despair or think you can't change who you are. There's no reason to think you're a bad person.

People are good.

And when we look at our lives and our choices, we can see the good and the not so good. And then we can work hard to be the best.