I was thinking that in life there are few things that you can control. But one thing that is almost entirely up to you is who you are.
Sure there may be some physical attributes that are more or less beyond your control, but you have the power to choose your behaviors and mindset.
Which means you might not have control over how tall you end up, but no matter what you can own it and accept it. Or you can hate yourself and blame all of your problems on it.
I guess it all comes back to responsibility.
You can’t control everything all the time, but you can control yourself and your reactions to everything all the time.
This is important because if your life is feeling really shitty, then you’d rather it be your fault, not some predestined fate chosen for you.
If it’s your fault then you can do something about it.
Congratulations.
So, if you’re unhappy then you’re in luck because it’s your fault and you can fix it.
No one else is going to do it for you.
This got me thinking about my own life and where I’m avoiding responsibility.
Here is my list.
- I struggle to connect with other people
- I don’t often open myself up to new experiences
- My focus is scattered and I don’t consistently work towards goals
- I’m scared of trying because I might embarrass myself
- I’m too nervous to let myself have fun
- I’d rather avoid boredom with media than try to read and learn
- My physical health (both eating and staying active)
- I don’t choose to be happy
That’s my list. Maybe yours is similar or maybe not.
Those are all areas of my life that I don’t feel very good about right now. But I have the power to change all of those things.
It’s very much under my control.
But for some reason I let these things define me. They feel like parts of me that I can’t escape.
In reality though it just takes time and practice and repetition to redefine yourself.
And a lot of the time it starts out feeling very unnatural and scary and daunting and anxiety inducing.
But that’s life.
Everything you do starts out hard. But the more you do it the better you get and the easier it gets.
You have to be really bad at something, before you can be kind of okay at that thing.
Someone said that. I don’t remember who, but I’ve heard it.
We’ll look at one of the items on my list as an example.
I struggle to connect with others.
That is something that I tell myself frequently. It doesn’t have to be that way though.
I would break this into a few pieces.
i. I’m scared to go up to people and start chatting.
ii. I’m scared I wouldn’t know what to say.
iii. I tend to lose contact with friends.
iv. I’m scared I would embarrass myself.
But each of those fears can be overcome. It probably wouldn’t even take that much time.
How would I go about overcoming a behavior that feels ingrained into me?
I would say you just need to consistently challenge yourself.
It doesn’t have to be crazy and you don’t have to be a different person by tomorrow.
Give yourself challenges that feel a little scary but still doable and practice them until it feels comfortable.
Once it’s comfortable you know you can take the next step.
It’s like lifting weights, but for your mind.
That’s about all I got for todays journal.
I would like to give myself a challenge though.
Choose to be happy.
This is a bit of a hard time to be happy right now for me in particular, but you’re never happy if you’re always looking for it in the future.
So I want to choose to be happy. Choose to smile and soak in the moment.
Appreciate my time and be grateful that I’m alive here today.
Thank you.