I'm becoming increasingly aware of how much influence we actually have on our own lives.
I'm not saying every situation, everything in life, has your freedom of choice stamped on it, however, there's some places in life that definitely do.
What do I mean?
"You become who you stand next to."
That's a quote from somewhere. At least, I think it is, but just can't pin down that quote as in... who actually said it.
Example, though...
Live around nuns who gave their whole lives to God and to helping people, and you'll come out one kind of person. Live around people who sit on the porch, drink, and mock everything that moves, and you'll come out another.
In other words, sit around complainers, that rubs off, and you become more of a complainer than you would have, had you not sat around them.
Hang out with people building a foundation to feed the homeless, you'll walk around with a completely different set of values pinging off the inside of your skull, and hence, you're a different person.
Watch YouTube content on the latest political debate or latest gossip or latest war or latest hell-on-Earth scenario, and your mind fills with anxiety, lack-of-hope, anger, and dread.
Watch YouTube content on someone helping out a person in need, someone helping a wounded animal, or someone surprising a long lost relative, and you come out with a new, shiny-feeling aura, your heart growing bigger and bigger in the process.
In that way, some — if not a lot — of life can be what you're looking at, and how you translate what you're looking at into feelings, and in turn, those feelings turn straight into thoughts.
Is life hard sometimes? Hell yeah.
Is life fun sometimes? Hell yeah.
"If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." — Wayne Dyer
"What's wrong is always available. So is what's right." — Tony Robbins
"You are one decision away from a completely different life." — Mel Robbins
Past a certain age, a lot of things in life are choices. Even how you speak to someone, even with what you say, and even with who you hang out the most with, and what you watch the most on TV, YouTube, wherever. Of course you didn't pick your family. You did and do pick everyone else. The friends, the partners, the voices you decide to hear and listen to and allow into your head.
And the choice looks slow from the outside. Five years, ten years to change a life. But the decision itself takes a second. One moment you're standing next to someone, the next moment you see what they're doing to you, and you walk a different way.
Who are you standing next to? Who do you listen to the most? What do you watch the most? What are those thoughts in your head saying to you on a daily basis? What types and kinds of words come out of your mouth mostly? Complaints? Or, compliments?
"Do not look at the faults of others, or what they have done or left undone. Look instead at what you yourself have done or left undone." — Buddha
"Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier." — Mother Teresa
"The mouth speaks what the heart is full of." — Jesus
I didn't know I was going to be throwing quotes around, but here they are!
