Are You In Control Of YOU?
- Jon Parker
- May 4, 2018
- 2 min read
Today was...trying. I spent a good portion of the day feeling as if I was one rude comment away from knocking someone's teeth down their throat.
That was what I felt.
But that isn't how I responded to the world.
I remembered one key thing today that I didn't really understand this time last year, and that is that I control how I respond to the world around me. Yes, you read that correctly. We are each responsible for, and in control of, the way we react to external stimuli.
Remembering this caused me to ask myself, "Why am I letting anyone other than me dictate my emotional state?"
And then I saw the ridiculousness of it all. We can't always stifle or stop our anger from rising up within us, or any other emotion for that matter, but we can control whether or not we feed it. What you feed into grows stronger, and soon that anger, if fed the right stuff, will evolve into rage.
I've been there. Too often.
It sucks.
Buddha was very correct in saying that anger is like holding a hot coal with the intention of throwing it at someone else.
You only end up burning yourself.
I'm not saying that there are no positive sides to anger. Positively, anger becomes drive, determination, focus. Negatively, though, it becomes rage or worse.
When that anger begins to build up within you because of the bullshit of the world, whatever it may be, and you respond by feeding it then what you are effectively doing is fruitlessly harming yourself. When someone is giving you shit and you let yourself get all worked up over it then you are only hurting you.
Don't give anyone control over you. People will try to take your control from you, whether they realize it or not, but that is something that you must hold on to tightly. Ultimately the only thing you have control over is you. That ability to decide for yourself what you will do in response to any given situation is a vine drooping into the rapids of the river of life. If you let go of the vine the river will sweep you away into oblivion. Giving up the only control you have means you become little more than a twig in the torrent.
However, maintaining that control over your responses means you get to decide in which direction your life will go. It means that you are the master of your destiny, and not a leaf to be blown about by the winds and whims of others.
Don't give up your control. Don't allow others to decide your fate.
Until next time,
Jon
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