In life we control only our own thoughts, feelings, emotions, and reactions. Accept more, let go more, react less, enjoy more. ∼@BodaciousLib
The only things in life we can control are our thoughts—their content and how they make us feel. ∼@tamsinmelissa
The absolute only thing we can control in life is how we respond to everything we have no control of. ∼@roatanvortex
We cannot control others, but we can control how we choose to respond and react to others. ∼@angieclifford
We can control our breath. ∼@sweethartdehart
We can control how we act in any circumstance. Choosing how we act will always get better results than simply reacting. ∼@positivedoing
We only control little things in life, what to eat or do tonight. The beauty of life is we can't control the major things. ∼@christiancropes
Our attitudes, our impulses (positive & negative), our views on the actions of others, our will power, and our ambition. ∼@MelissaRowley
We can only control what we put into our own body and mind. We should be better to ourselves. ∼@cbruels
Your intention is always up to you; the rest continually changes with your participation. ∼@nobodhi
At the height of the economic meltdown in 2009, I read an article on CNN.com about the surge in appointments for psychic readings. Faced with uncertainty about career prospects and overall security, many Americans packed away their skepticism and headed to their local clairvoyant, hoping to find comfort in a crystal ball. According to a professor at Columbia Business School, Gita Johar, who studies consumer behavior, the strongest motivation for visiting a psychic is to feel a sense of control.
I understand the allure. Between 1995 and 2007, I spent more than $2,000 on psychic readings. Even as I moved and traveled all around the United States—oftentimes with only a credit card to make ends meet—I kept the number for that tearoom in Boston where I became a teenage Wiccan and scheduled appointments to ask if I was heading in the right direction. I'd talk about my career ambitions and how resistant I felt to being in the rat race. I'd wax poetic about my quest for love, questioning whether or not I was getting closer to finding someone who might validate me. I'd complain about the gutwrenching inner conflict I felt over wanting to go home to Massachusetts but feeling terrified of giving up just before I found myself or my purpose.
Sometimes I rambled for the full half-hour, leaving little if any time to receive insight. It would have been cheaper to get a therapist, but I'd already been down that road—and what I wanted was a guarantee that everything would be okay. I wanted some type of assurance that I was doing the right things and that I could give myself permission to stop worrying. For a long time, I convinced myself the strangers with the tarot cards gave me the strength to go on; until one day I looked back and realized they never actually gave me any concrete answers. They never predicted where my life was headed or outlined a road map to get there. They merely gave me the illusion of knowing absolute truth. It wasn't the truth that set me free; it was the way I let go when I believed I could trust that I knew the truth.
When I look back on my experiences with tinybuddha.com and everything that brought me to it, what I realize is that I feel no less uncertain about the world and my place within it now than I ever did. There has never been a moment in time when I felt like I had discovered that magic bullet, the ultimate answer to happiness, understanding, and wisdom. There's never been a moment when I've felt I have it all figured out. There is still so much that I don't know or understand, and yet I'm liberated having decided to accept that and instead to focus on what I can do right now.
You may never know where you've come from or where you're going, but you can choose what you do with the time you know you have. You can accept that pain is inevitable and save yourself and others a lot of suffering by learning from it all as you go. You'll never be perfect, but if you believe in yourself and commit to new possibilities, you can change, both because you want to and because the world changes around you. Sometimes things will happen that you may never understand, but you have a say in how the future unfolds and how you react to the things you didn't anticipate.
You have a say in how often you cling to negative emotions and how often you let go, giving yourself permission to feel free and happy. You get to choose the things you do each day, even if it doesn't always seem that way. Every day, you can decide to do something to feel meaningful, empowered, happy, and connected. Even if it's something little— especially if it's something little. The most beautiful things in life grow from the choice to start with one simple step. You get to choose what you think and feel about it all, whether you create limiting stories about what things mean or you open yourself up to new possibilities you didn't even know to imagine. If one day you don't do so well with being proactive and present, you can start all over, right where you are, without carrying the burden of what's been. You can decide at any time to be reborn.
You can decide at any time that you don't need to have all the answers. You just need to honestly answer the question of what you want to do with your life—who you want to be and what that might look like. In a highly uncertain world, you can reassure yourself that you don't have to know and control everything. You just have to trust that you know enough to take responsibility for now.