When we are growing up we are advised to get an education and career - to follow the safe path.  But whenever you follow an existing path that has been planned out for you, you may be cheating yourself.

You should aim to make your own path and if that is similar to others that's fine but you don't have to be afraid of being different.  The important point is that it's the path you want to take.  Not a path someone else has told you to follow.

Ask yourself how many times things that you have done have made you unhappy.  Now ask yourself how many times you've been unhappy because you didn't do something you wanted to do.  

It's the times we didn't say "I love you", the travelling we didn't do, the job we didn't apply for and the risk that we didn't take that usually causes us to be unhappy.  If you don't do the things you want to do in life then it's as if your killing your spirit and you're not fulfilling your life's purpose.

You're not becoming all that you can be if your not doing what you want to do.  It's fine if you're conventional - just as long as you're sure that you are and it's not because of other peoples expectations.

It's easy to say 'no' to something new and sometimes that's a sensible thing to do.  When you say 'no' you can usually predict the everything stays as it is and so 'no' is safe.

But sometimes it's far more interesting to take the unsafe options and say 'yes' to what you want.  When you say 'yes' you embark on a journey that is exciting, threatens to disturb your routine and is a little bit of a stretch.  

Now that's living, because saying 'no' to something new means everything stays the same and is that what you really want?