Chapter Five
Your Life
Part 1: Out of Your Control
In vitro (during your development prior to birth), you’re given:
- A particular character
- A physical body to host it
- A future life to live
Some lives appear to start out with more positive factors than negative ones, and vice versa. Whether or not what "appears to be" is actually accurate, and regardless of how each life starts, everyone has the potential to rise and shine, crash and burn, or choose a place in the range between the two extremes.
Regardless of why people’s lives start out with different situations, some possibly being more fortunate than others, you want to make the most of what you’ve been given. Improving or destroying your life, or anything in between, is your responsibility. To make the most of your life, you should avoid as many undesirable situations as possible and cause as many favorable situations as possible.
You’ll soon understand that most of the circumstances that are “out of your control” occur prior to birth and during childhood. Regardless of the circumstances that are out of your control, you’ll need to take control of your life at age 18 and attempt to build as good a life as possible for yourself. Should circumstances that are out of your control negatively affect you into adulthood, physical therapy or emotional counseling might be beneficial for you.
As an adult, you “have no control over” only a small percentage of the overall situations you experience. And while some of those may be bad, others will be good. You’ve probably heard that, “With good comes bad,” or “You have to take the bad with the good.” Here’s how:
For the situations you experience that are out of your control and:
- Affect you positively (like nice weather) – you should be thankful, such gratitude shown by gracefully accepting the undesirable situations you experience that are out of your control (like getting stuck at a red light).
- Affect you a little negatively (high prices) – you should be thankful that they’re not worse, such gratitude shown by accepting them gracefully.
- Affect you very negatively (losing your job) – you should be thankful that they’re not more severe and more frequent, such gratitude shown by gracefully accepting these undesirable situations, overcoming them as well as possible, and learning from them (if there’s anything constructive to be learned, which there usually is).
Occasionally, undesirable situations will arise that you have no control over. When such a situation occurs, you could dwell on how inconvenienced, annoyed and angry you are. Or instead, you could recognize it as a time to show the appreciation you may claim to have for the favorable situations you experience in your life that you also don’t influence to come about. Being appreciative when you experience a good situation isn’t much of a sacrifice. To really be appreciative for the good you experience in your life that occurs without your influence, express that appreciation by gracefully accepting the undesirable situations you experience that are out of your control.
Part 2: You Can Influence
You have no control over the starting situation of your life – prior to birth and the major influencing factors of your childhood – as well as a few of the situations you experience later as an adult. That means “what you do have influence over” is all of the other situations you experience in your life! Only very few situations in your adult life are totally out of your control and unavoidable. You usually have at least some input, if not total control. And again, that’s most of the time!
You’re about to embark on an exciting, life-changing journey during which you’ll learn to recognize how often your input can bring about positive results in almost all of the situations in your life.
All decisions have consequences. Making good decisions minimizes your experiences of disappointment and your involvement in undesirable situations. It’s therefore helpful to learn how to make good decisions. Rather than giving you vague advice that leaves you with the desire to improve but that doesn’t give you real directions to follow, you’re going to get clear instructions in this book. You’ll learn, step-by-step, how to improve your decision-making skills. Then you’ll see that causing yourself to experience favorable circumstances as results of your good decisions can become standard behavior for you. You’ll understand how the decisions you make influence the types of situations you experience, relative to each specific scenario you might experience in life.
Though some of the situations you’ll experience from the part of life that’s "out of your control" will be good, you’ll probably experience a few disappointments and undesirable situations that are “out of your control” as well. Therefore, you’ll also learn how to reduce the impact they have on your life.
You’ll learn to avoid many undesirable situations, and lessen the impact of those you can’t avoid.
The decisions you make and the actions you take will result in rewards or repercussions - positive or negative situations - for you to experience. The situations you experience are mostly results of your decisions or actions. Improving the quality of your decisions can result in more outcomes that are favorable for you.
Throughout your life
YOU MAKE DECISIONS
and
YOU EXPERIENCE THE OUTCOMES OF THE DECISIONS YOU MAKE.