All of my posts are personal to me. The topics I choose to write about, talk about, expand on, and share are all personal. They all come from a moment of reflection on my own life and journey. And from these reflections I share not only what I want but I want I think may be able to help someone else. With that being said, I found myself using the subject of this article as a reminder to myself. I found myself using this as almost a mantra of sorts.
I found myself asking a new question, instead of the old questions I use to use to push myself into the direction I felt best. I replace the question of why things were happening. I stopped asking and thinking what did I do wrong. I stopped thinking of where I could have made adjustments. And I stopped planning on how I could prevent the wrong outcomes from happening again. Those were all replaced with one question. Who is in control?
If you know me well enough you know I am not a fan of excuses. I am not a fan of "trying". I am a pusher in the vein of DOING. I am a marcher in the parade of ACCOUNTABILITY. I have always felt that before you can think about holding anyone else accountable to anything, you must hold yourself accountable to everything. And in this I found myself circling back to the question. Who is in control? Not who is in charge, but who is in control.
It is important to understand that the painful but powerful truth is that we are in control of ourselves. We are in control of our lives. We make the decisions that lead to the outcomes. We make the decisions to relinquish control and we make the decision to pretend that we have no control. You are in control of your life. No one else. You.
I found myself a few days ago not accepting the responsibility that I am in control of what happens to me. I was having a rough day and things were not going my way. No matter how I tried to reset and get better footing, things were not communicating in my favor. Fast forward a few days and on this particular day things were going smoothly. Not only were things going as planned, they were going better than planned. I thought to myself how can I keep this vibe going? And that is when I came to my realization. The rough day I had before I did not want to accept ownership of, but I wanted to accept ownership of the day that worked out perfectly. Human nature I guess. But it was not correct and I knew it.
I was responsible for both days. I was ultimately the common denominator. Both days occurred in my life, and as such they were both in my control. But dwelling in the past is not going to fix anything. I learned this lesson the hard way in the past. Focusing on now would fix my current timeline, improve the future timeline, and create a better "past" when I looked back on things at a later date. And accepting responsibility was just the beginning.
I am in control of my life, the same way you are in control of yours. If things are drifting away from where you want them to go, take control. TAKE CONTROL. Being a passenger in a driverless car will lead to tragic results. (self driving cars not included here) So this week I have been repeating this to myself when things are not going as I would like. "Who is in control?" By constantly reminding myself of this I may not be able to prevent things from go awry, but I am able to change the narrative.
I am able to see what is happening as a result of myself, and since i had the power to cause my discomfort I have the power to create my own comfort. I have the power to set things right, to change my perspective, to see things differently, to be positive. I have the control, because I am in control. And this has been pretty awesome. And as great as things have been for myself, the point of this is not to boast and brag about how things have spun around in my better interests.
The point is to share this with you, so you can do it too. That is, if you have not already. TAKE CONTROL. You are the driver. You hold the ability to command the direction in which things should go. So go start today. Go live an amazing life. Go be the amazing person you are. And when things are going bad (or good) I want you to say to yourself my little mantra. That magical little question. Who is in control? Then remind yourself of the answer. You are. And acknowledging that is the first step towards taking control.