You Can’t Control Everything, but You Can Choose How to Respond

I remember one woman whose mother would almost beg to babysit her children and then gripe about the inconvenience for weeks to come. She could not acknowledge that she had chosen to take care of the kids, and her daughter had not "made" her do it.

We negate that we have choices about how we spend our lives and time. We may complain about how bored we are, but do not accept responsibility for learning a new skill or hobby. We may gripe about a "crummy" person at work, but we don't take proactive steps to improve our situation.

There are certainly things in life over which we have no control, but we always have a choice about how we will respond to these things. Our choices determine our direction in life, but if we do not own this fact, we don't know where we are going, and we resent where we end up as if it were someone else's fault.

Complaining and griping without trying to do anything about a situation is the essence of denying choice, and it renders us powerless and resentful. Not making a choice is making a choice. There will come a day when we all must be held accountable for the choices we make, even when we don't think we are making one.

Are we looking at this from the right angle though? Isn't it also completely amazing that nearly everything that happens to us is the result of a choice? Doesn't that also mean that if we can learn how to recognize the right choice and develop the tools necessary to make it over and over again, great things will happen?

If you're unhappy about where your choices have gotten you, you have to own up to your responsibility in making them. But don't despair, because the same process – making choices – that got you where you are today, can get you where you want to be in the future.

Let me show you how to get there.