Life isn’t happening to you, it’s happening from you.
Friends, I will admit upfront that I am generally speaking an exceptionally (some might say annoyingly) positive person. I always have been. In my twenties I used to have a couple of you tube video montages of all these motivational speakers, or speeches, or scenes from movies that were motivating and inspiring and I used to play them on a loop walking to and from work. Tony Robbins, Will Smith, Al Pacino (that “inches” speech in the movie Any Given Sunday HAS to surely be one of the best speeches ever written!?) There was a time there even Yoda quotes made an appearance (“you must do the thing you think you cannot do”). One of my favorite songs is the sunscreen song. You get the picture, it all works on me.
It’s not hard to trace the origins of where this came from in myself. I have strong memories of my father reading a lot of how to, self help and motivational books. He was reading Tony Robbins long before I was ever playing you tube montages! These books would be scattered all around the house. He used to read them with a highlighter and highlight the bits he wants to remember (something I now do too). I’ve also had instilled in me from a young age by my mother that nobody is coming to make me the best version of myself. I have always understood in no uncertain terms that is 100% up to me. No lover, no partner, no friend, no boss, no mentor, no family member, no future child of mine, no nothing is going to come along and all of a sudden turn me in to the person that I have the potential to be. I don’t know how she managed to instill that in me while also, every step of the way, making me feel like I was ALWAYS enough, just as I was. Mothers, eh? The absolute best of us.
Heres the real clincher about it all though. In my view,’ sometimes a positive outlook is the literal only thing standing between you and success, or between you and demise.
Hear me out.
What if I told you, that at the end of the day, that vision you have of your future self, no matter how hidden in the deep recesses of your mind it is (I know it’s in there friend), that person you want to be, what if you decided you already are that person. That version of you actually exists in some quantum future. It’s YOUR vision, nobody else sees it yet and I’ll tell you the truth, nobody else actually cares about it like you do. If you want to be that person the only thing standing in your way is the mindset that you have to get you there; the actions you take between right here and right now and where you want to be. Day by day, thought by thought, action by action, habit by habit, it will all get you where you want to be.
Even as a self confessed positive person, I know and accept that life is generally not fair. In fact, it can be devastatingly unfair. Life can also be wonderful. One does not negate the other and these two facts co-exist. They are not mutually exclusive but rather two sides of the same coin. The sooner you accept that life isn’t happening to you, its happening from you, the sooner you can adapt to anything that comes your way, the awful, the devastating, the good, the great and the wonderful. You can choose your response. It’s a gift that can set you free.
It doesn’t matter what that future you or future goal of yours is. Maybe you want to run 3k, maybe you want to paint your living room, maybe you want to start a new life in a new country, maybe you want to start your own business. Whatever that future is or looks like to you, start acting as if YOU are the instrument and the melody flows from your fingertips, or YOU are the painter and the vibrant colors become a visual masterpiece because you willed it to be so.
That, to me, is what the phrase life isn’t happening to you its happening from you means.
Yes its true that it is also harder and tougher to look at life and our careers and our future in this way, because the downside to this view is you have to look your fuck ups right in the face and say sometimes “I fucked that one up, nobody else, just me”. Those moments in life and careers are incredibly frustrating and more often than not, theres nothing else for it then to sit with the rage or the shame or the regret. You also have to accept the devastating losses and blows that life throws at us all, the ones that break us and the ones we’ll never be the same after. Failures, financial crisis, breaks ups, death, depression, illness, loss. The realization of our futility in these moments and the crippling fear that comes with that realization is not to be underplayed. But guess what happens after these things? You can move. You can move through it, you can move forward. When you are good and ready.
So my friends (and I do appreciate this is much easier said than done) but life isn’t happening to you, it’s happening from you. Once embraced it can be an intensely beautiful thing full of heart thumping cord variations and blazing shades of color. I think we owe it to ourselves to experience it all.