“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable to joyous. I can be a tool of torture, or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we rerate people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.” Johann Wolfgang

I have consistently managed to go through life with the attitude that things happen. Bad things happen, good things happen, fate is fate. I was the “everything happens for a reason” or “you get what you get” kind of girl. I figured that it didn’t matter my attitude or my actions, although they may alter my path slightly, it was all predetermined, decided for me. I let things happen to me. It was an easy way to go through life, pretending I didn’t have any control.

But then I decided to choose. To take control. To no longer allow things to happen without my approval. I am not under the illusion that I have control of everything that occurs to me, but you could say I believe I can handle most of it. I make the decisions, I am the most important element to my fate and to my future. It is most certainly nerve-racking to hold the belief that things happen to me because I have allowed them to happen to me. It carries with it an assumption of blame when things do not go how they are supposed to go. It is a realization that forces me to accept responsibility for the turns my life takes. It is not an easy decision, but a necessary one.

There is something to be said for working hard. It has allowed me not only the understanding that I should accept responsibility, but has increased by self-confidence, for now I believe that I am a large part in the events of my lifetime. There are things that occur that I would like to blame on the Big Man Upstairs, on people in my life, on my unfortunate circumstances, but complaints like these just foster thoughts of spoiled brat or not-even-thankful-for-what-she-has. I have never intended to be that kind of person.

I am reaching for my ideal self. To be the kind of person who does things, the movers, the shakers, the “round peg in a square hole” (according to Apple) type of worker. Forcing myself to have such an internal locus of control has pushed me closer to the kind of person I wish to become. I love to cling to the idea that everything happens for a reason, because it is a thought of positivity and hope, but sometimes bad things happen because I messed up, and accepting that helps me fix my problems so much faster.

So every day I choose. I wake up and I choose to be happy, I choose to work hard, I choose to be the kind of person I have always wanted to be. I consciously choose my relationships, I choose my priorities and I choose my values. And there are some days that come, when I don’t choose, and I fear these days are wasted on frivolous and irrelevant activities.