Ever find yourself coming up with incredibly great reasons to NOT go after something you truly want?

As silly as it sounds, it’s completely natural for the human mind – particularly the ego – to come up with reasons to stop us from what we want.

The job we want.

The position we want.

The business we want.

The relationship we want.

Ultimately, the life we want.

These reasons we come up with are logical. They make total sense to us.

They’ll have us convinced with perfectly sound reasoning to not go after what we want.

“It’s to much stress for right now.”

“It’ll take too much time out of my day.”

“It’ll negatively impact my relationships.”

“It’ll require a sacrifice I’m not ready for.”

“I don’t want all that responsibility on my shoulders.”

It turns out, the ego (the self-talking part of our mind) is awfully good at coming up with powerful rationalizations that sound true on the surface, simply to protect itself from change.

The ego HATES change.

Therefore, it HATES doing anything that seems scary, uncomfortable, or has within it factors of uncertainty.

If we’re not aware of its methods, it can act as a self-sabotage mechanism that stops us in our tracks.

Then what happens?

Well, the mind may rationalize with excuse, but the heart knows the truth.

Shame seeps in.

Disappointment. Guilt. Self-condemnation.

And really, overall unhappiness and low self-esteem.

Look, it’s OK that this happens.

It’s completely understandable that we’d make up these rationalizations.

BUT, we don’t have to believe them.

That’s where we have our power, where we can leverage our ability – CHOICE.

“You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.”
~Dr. Seuss

Everybody is vulnerable to stress.

Everybody.

Majority of life happens outside our control.

Sometimes things come and knock us down.

Our health can become affected, our finances, our relationships.

Things that have absolutely nothing to do with us can come and cause a tremendous ruckus.

However, especially in those times, it’s critical we remember that stress doesn’t come from the facts.

It comes from the MEANING we give to the facts.

Yes, things happen – but it’s within our power to choose how we’re accepting them.

We can fight the circumstances, or we can transcend them.

We can mold situations to launch us into problem-solving mode.

By changing what a situation means to us, we completely change how we react to it.

This is leveraging our Power of Choice.

See, we can always choose what we focus on. We can always choose what things mean to us. And, we can always choose what to do in response.

With these three decisions, we can steer the course of our life, our destiny.

Before this gets misinterpreted, I’m not saying you’ll always get what you want if you just manage these three things.

We can always choose what to do, but we have to also choose the right things to do – things that will lead us closer to what we want.

And even then, if I said you’re guaranteed to get what you want, it would be a lie.

There’s still an element of “luck”, or universal law.

However, I will say this, if you’re completely focused and keep choosing to do the right things in the right ways, you tend to be more “lucky”.

Definitely, you’re better off than if you were to choose to sit around and believe you’re powerless to life’s circumstances.

You’ll have more self-esteem.

You’ll develop more experience.

You’ll increase your sense of self-worth.

And in the long run, you’ll become a better leader for yourself, your family, and for society.

Our obstacle is to overcome ourselves – to overcome our ego.

By practicing self-awareness, we can get the better of our rationalizations, and we can use stress to catapult us forward.

“Rule your mind or it will rule you.”
– Horace, Roman Poet