There is very little in this world that we have real control over, and that is a frightening prospect; because we all have the need for certainty in life, and the lack of it threatens our safety and security.
But the fact of the matter is that most things are outside of our control.
We can influence people and situations to a certain degree but we can never fully control.
And if we try to? It rarely works out in our favour.
When it comes to people we can coax, cajole, mislead, and force all we like but that takes constant energy from us and is therefore not sustainable, neither does it feel good because it’s unnatural.
It’s simply not meant to be.
I – like you I’m sure – have had my fair share of experience in forcing things that are simply not meant to be; from relationships, life choices, and personal goals, to business ideas and new products or services.
I have fought, and I have fought hard, for many things that I didn’t get.
But you know what?
The best things that I have received in life are the result of my not getting the things I initially wanted.
Sure, it doesn’t seem that way at the time, but looking back now I can see how much good stuff I would have missed out on if I had got what I wanted at the time.
Not getting what I wanted pushed me to try another way, or look another way, it was part of the process for me to get what I actually wanted.
Now I’m not trying to sugarcoat things; life is hard and uncomfortable a lot of the time.
But I believe it’s supposed to be that way, if it wasn’t then we wouldn’t feel as much as we do.
And the feeling is what makes us alive.
If we didn’t feel sorrow then we wouldn’t feel joy.
And if we didn’t experience loss, then we wouldn’t appreciate gain.
And if we didn’t feel resistance then we wouldn’t feel the sweet lightness of being in a state of flow.
We have to embrace it all; and while I don’t expect myself, or you, to always smile through the shit, we have to remember that while we don’t often have a choice in circumstances, we always have a choice in how we respond to those circumstances.
We always have a choice in how we view things. And I say this time and time again, we are the creators of our own reality.
How we perceive things to be they will be.
How we perceive things are, they are.
There is one thing we do have control over, and that is our perception of the world.
And for each one of us, changing our perception does in fact change the world around us.
