We all get caught in the trap of living our lives based on other people’s expectations. But life is not about expectations. And it’s certainly not about other people’s expectations. It’s about your experiences and what you do each and every day, and only you can decide what type of experiences are meaningful to you.

As children, we both tried to color between the lines. That’s what was expected and we always wanted to do what was right. When we were in college, working for ourselves was the last thing on our minds. It never even occurred to us that having our own business was something we should consider. But somewhere along the way, we wondered who actually wrote all of these rules? Who passed the law about coloring within the lines? And who decided that we should follow a traditional career path?

We stopped playing by the rules – or at least what we thought were the rules – when we finally realized that our life belongs to us and us alone. When other people advised us to follow a traditional career path rather than start our own business, we listened but moved on, trusting our instincts and taking a series of calculated risks. Advice is generally well intentioned but not always useful. One piece of advice we were given was that we were too young to get married. Thirty-five years later, we’re still happy with our life together and more than a few of our early advisors have been separated or divorced more than once. So much for living life the way other people think it should be lived.