“You will never be as young as you are now.”

These are the words of Neil Pasricha in his TED talk. For those of you unaware, Neil is the author of 1000 Awesome Things, a great blog about the awesome things in life.

I love this quote, because it really brings to life the whole idea of “carpe diem” and seizing the day.

You will never be as young as you are now.

Reflect on that for a moment. Right now is the time when you will have the most energy you will ever have in your life. The most opportunity to change your future. The greatest time to take risks.

You see, with every year that goes by, you will acquire new responsibilities, which will take up more and more of your time. That might be related to starting a family, or increasing responsibilities in your job, or other commitments in your life. And I’m not saying these are bad things – true, they are a sign of growing up.

At the same time, are these the commitments and responsibilities that you wanted all along? Because if your future is not heading where you want it to be, then the time to start making a change in your life is now.

Now is the time to take risks. You are in your undergrad – nothing is set in stone. Now is the time to explore different courses and majors. And in particular, different professions.

Just because in high school you applied to biology, doesn’t mean you have to become a doctor or a dentist or a researcher or a biologist or anything remotely related to science. Do what’s best for your future. If that means taking a day of class to go shadow someone in an industry that interests you, please, for your sake, do it. No I’m not telling you to be irresponsible, but I am encouraging you to take your own life by the hands. No one is going to hand you what will make you happy in life – you need to find what will motivate and drive you, and grasp it, and continue to grasp for more.

One of my biggest regrets was not taking risks in my life sooner. In high school, there was so much time and opportunity to take risks and explore for your future. In university, there was even less. Now that I am in medical school, I spend many hours a day in the hospital, and it becomes even more difficult to explore not realities in my life.

There are so many ideas and projects I wish I could go back in time and start in undergrad. There are so many articles I wish I wrote but was too lazy or swamped to do. Heck, I wish I started this blog even earlier than I did. Over and over again, the number one thing I regret in any endeavour is not having started earlier.

Trust me, the time to take risks is now.