Choose Your Thoughts and Choose to Believe Them

Before you start reading a post like this, you have to cue the music. (Here’s the link.) Don’t forget to turn up the speakers.

I’ll wait.

Every once in awhile, I’m reminded that life will throw you the proverbial shit sandwich. It will also throw these aforementioned shit sandwiches in spades when given the opportunity. Earlier this week I was completely blindsided by some unfavorable news. I suspect that it was because my life has been on an upward trend and it was time to knock down the good ol’ self-esteem down a few notches anyways. What can I say…life happens.

That said, I’m always surprised by people who do some really mean things to one another. I find it partially fascinating and partially terrifying. How can someone, in clear conscious, ever seek out to hurt someone else for their own personal gain? How is that even satisfying? I can’t fathom it. I wonder if these people ever have the capacity to realize that in hurting someone else, they are in fact setting off a chain reaction of that person hurting another person, and that person hurting another person, etc? These events start off a negative spin cycle that makes it incredibly difficult to break out of, until someone is strong enough to step up and turn it all around.

I’m trying to go zen but every day, I face a different battle. Reality vs. expectations. What I feel vs. what I know. What everyone else thinks vs. what I think. I know that I can’t control how other people act. I can’t control how other people treat me. There isn’t really much in this world you and I have control over, except for one thing: how we react to the things that happen to us.

My coach said it best — “You choose your thoughts. And you also choose to believe them.” I choose to believe that the way I was treated was a reflection of that person’s reality, not of my character. I choose to believe that every passing moment will be better than the next. I choose to believe that people enter into your life to teach you valuable lessons. I choose to believe that people depart from your life when they have nothing left to offer you. I choose to believe that forgiveness is possible. I choose to believe that love prevails when there seems to be no reason that it should.

The world’s greatest lie is that “at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.” I choose to believe that we all make a series of decisions that propel us forward or set us back. But it is all a series of choices that we make. We set all the pieces in motion to arrive at where we are right this very second. When we realize that, we can learn to set the pieces in the direction of your goals and aspirations.