Take charge of your life!
Make your own opportunities!
YOU control your destiny!
If you fail to plan, you are planning to Fail!
I’m sure a lot of you are ready to defend these as I declare lies and deceit. That’s fine. I hope the day that you realize “controlling” your environment is as realistic as “planning” to win the lottery comes sooner than later for you.
I remember living my life abiding my those sayings – Wow, did it ever seem like I had my shit together! Key word here: “seem.” You develop skills at forcing life to go in certain directions, but eventually you have to be honest, and that’s when I’ll admit I spent most of my time convincing myself and those around me that I caused things to happen the way they were happening. How dare I exclaim that something was happening to me and I was simply reacting! Never! Not in Miranda’s World! I’m a driven, motivated and “in-control” person. Go team Type A!
Giggle, snort! Some good that did me.
I’ll break it down. Rather than seeing things rationally, rather than accepting the lack of control we have on this planet, I’d blame myself.
“Well, if that didn’t work out exactly as I planned it, I must have screwed something up! Where did I make the mistake? I must not have put in enough effort…”
Rather than accepting the laws of physics and time and the walls of capability within those realms, I constantly tried to expand them… and blamed myself when I failed.
Spiral, spiral, spiral…. Plop. I think I landed somewhere in the land despair and hopelessness believing I was useless and lazy, ignorant and incapable, weak and without-potential. It’s like an ant trying to tear down a brick wall all on its own. At some point, we need to accept the boundaries of our control and see the brick walls for what they are.
This doesn’t mean there isn’t a million different ways to approach these walls and use them to our benefit, because there is, but that is just chasing those motivational sayings again. In essence, it’s just finding new ways to force life down a certain path (I tried multiple methods of those after climbing out of my spiraling self-esteem pit.)
While I do believe in taking responsibility for our actions and recognizing we have influence and impact on the world around us, that is quite different than setting the expectation to a level of unprecedented control. There is a fine balance between accepting life as it is, and using the now to move us forward. For me, that no longer involves telling myself that I’m controlling my future. I’ve got a say in the direction I’m headed, but it’s so minute. Without exaggerating our power and influence, efforts at success are hardly futile, but faith and trust need to be seen as playing as big a role as our physical actions.
“Trust the universe.” I remember a brilliant and joy-filled woman telling me this one morning over coffee. It falls quite in line with my new ‘go-to’ saying of the year – round pegs go in round holes, square pegs go in square holes; don’t try to force it any other way.
You're a leaf on the breeze, with no control, or input, or decision making abilities that make any difference.
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You completely control you're reality. You make everything that happens, happen.
Most people find a balance in the middle somewhere.
I know you haven't requested opinions, but in your wall analogy I might say that it's good to acknowledge brick walls, but unless you take a little bit of a run at one you won't know how tall it is, or if it's really brick. Those posters seem trite, I suppose, but I can see the value in the concept. You can acknowledge you are not in charge of it all, without conceding that you are in charge of none of it.
I liked the post.