If you choose to go to the gym today, you are shaping your destiny of becoming a healthy and strong individual. If you choose to help a friend in need, you are also fulfilling your destiny. You are creating a perception in their mind that you are a caring and loving friend they can count on. Let’s say you choose to go to a one-day job fair just to check out your options. It may only be a couple of hours out of your entire life, but it could change your destiny.
Refuse to let chance rule your destiny. Be aware of your choices today and remember that the small decisions have just as much power to shape your destiny as the big ones.
DAY
177
“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.”
— John Wayne
What will you do with the gift of a brand new day? Think about the way John Wayne describes it in the quote above. It is brand new when it arrives, and it is placed right in the palms of your hands. You can do whatever you want with a new day. What’s it going to be?
The pristine nature of a perfect new day is exciting. It is brimming with potential. When you wake in the morning, absolutely anything can happen to shape your destiny. You might discover something you never knew about yourself, or you could get the satisfaction of conquering a big problem at work or at home. Maybe you will spend some quality time with your family and remember how important those people are in your life and how much they add color and vibrancy to your days.
Your assignment today is to write down some of the things you learned from yesterday. It’s so important not to waste the gift of a new day by repeating old mistakes. Life is too short to play reruns of the less-than-perfect parts of your life. Write down the lessons you’ve learned, and apply them to this new day.
The universe wants you to learn from life and take each new morning in your hands like the precious gift that it is and mold it into your destiny. Be prepared to shape today into a beautiful day, no matter what outside forces blow through your life. Today is perfect, and tomorrow will be, too. They are in your hands. Have you learned from yesterday?
DAY
178
“What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life.”
— Leo Buscaglia
Dawn was miserable 99 percent of the time. She was a beautiful, smart woman brimming with potential, but she refused to step up and try something new or change the way she had always lived her life. She sat over coffee with her friends and complained about her weight, her job, and her relationships at least once a week. They offered ideas and advice from their own life experiences, but she looked at them skeptically as if to say, “well, you’re lucky. I’m not. This is just the way my life is.”
As a direct result of her actions (or inaction), Dawn was completely unhappy with the direction her life was headed. She had been in a string of mediocre relationships, never meeting anyone who was captivating enough to consider marrying. Her job was reliable but boring. At work her own clients told her she could do better, but their comments fell on deaf ears.
One day when Dawn returned from work to her small apartment, she sank to the floor like a wilted flower. “Will I ever know happiness?” she sighed to herself through tears of frustration.
Dawn held the secret of happiness within her all along, but she had to get up off the floor and be willing to choose life.
What do you do to choose life today? Are you happy? If the answer is no, you now have the secret of happiness. Choose life.
DAY
179
“In every single thing you do, you are choosing a direction. Your life is a product of choices.”
— Dr. Kathleen Hall
You have been considering your choices in life for several days now. If you’ve actively participated in the exercises of the last 178 days, you realize by now that this book will offer you no chance to pass the buck. You can’t blame anyone but yourself for your present circumstances. That can be a slightly depressing thought, but it is also liberating. It doesn’t mean that everything is your fault. It means that you have the power to change anything you want from here on out.
It is exhilarating to find out that life is a product of your choices. Think about the alternative. How disheartening would it be to find out life is the product of other people’s choices? You would be tempted to give up on the whole journey if you had no say in the direction. Lucky for you, that is not the case.
Your assignment is to look back on the last seven days of your life. Write down all the choices you made over the last week in your journal. That’s a pretty daunting task, isn’t it? You most likely made thousands of choices, but just come up with the highlights. Next to each choice write a few words about the direction you took as a result of that choice. Now sit back and examine the results of your week. How does it look as a whole? Did you make good choices for the most part? If your plotted your direction on a chart, would it be all over the place, would it be all downhill, or would you be steadily climbing toward success? Your life is a product of your choices. Take them seriously.
DAY
180
“I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime.”
— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
It is extremely liberating to know that you always get to choose the direction you take in life. You are in complete control. Unfortunately, that also comes with some responsibility. If you want to accept the glory when you achieve success, you also must be willing to accept the consequences when you screw up.
Do you believe there are consequences to every deed, word, and thought you have throughout your lifetime? Write in your journal for at least fifteen minutes to answer to that question. Are there always consequences, or do you feel like you probably get away with some things in life unscathed? Can there be consequences to your thoughts if you don’t follow through and act on them?
Consider this brain teaser: if you really can’t stand someone at work, but you never say anything mean to them or do anything harmful to that person, are there any consequences to your thoughts?
Do you think about consequences much? It can be debilitating to worry too much about consequences and never have the guts to move forward and take action. But it can also be damaging if you forge ahead without regard to the potential penalties. There must be a balance. Your choices can bring you success, but there will be good or bad consequences to all of your actions. You have to take responsibility for it all if you want to take credit for any of it.