“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised.

“It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

~The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

We never lose control of what is happening to us, but we lose the perception of having control over what is happening. Let me be clearer though – we can never control what another person does to us, but we can control our response and reaction, and thus the situation. Many people are unaware that there is a choice, that if we are being attacked in a physical, verbal or emotional way, that it requires a specific kind of response. But that’s not true. If it were true then everyone would react the exact same way to a specific stimulus, and we don’t. We are a product of so many things, including previous experiences, that we all experience the same event differently. This can be proven simply by asking four eyewitness what happened in an accident. There will be four different answers because they observe and report based on what is most important to them. The thing we need to try to understand is that what someone is doing to us is not about us, but about them, and although it may be very difficult and it feels like it’s about us, we must try to not take it personally. I realize this is not a quick or easy lesson to understand, but it’s worth the time to fully grasp it.

Back to the quote, losing control over what is happening and being controlled by fate is also about giving up, not believing we have a choice in how our future plays out. We do have a choice, and starting by understanding we have a choice in the moment leads us into understanding our perception shapes our future too. There are so many spiritual practices that can help with this; the one I want to share now is about writing your future.

Practice: You: the Novel. Consider a real situation you feel you have no control over. There is a good chance as you review this situation in your head, it never comes out in your favor. Let’s change that. Write down the situation, but as you’re writing it, write it in your favor. Change any details you need to change so you’re the winner, and feel the power of that! Really feel and imagine it as you write it, knowing that a new or different outcome really is possible. The situations you write about may not change immediately, but you will start to see unexpected outcomes, and as you continue this practice, things will begin to shift.

Here’s a video with more on the practice:

Create the life of your dreams!  Please let me know how writing your life works out.