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Home  |  Flourishing in Life  | Human Growth  | A Pawn in Someone Else's Game

A Pawn in Someone Else's Game

BY: T. Franklin Murphy | May 2018
We don't control everything; but do control many things. Through our action, we have significant influence on our future. If we blame frustrations on the uncontrollable aspects of our lives, we will be imprisoned to the pain and limited by our views.
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Taking Responsibility
We don't control everything; but do control many things. Through our action, we have significant influence on our future. If we blame frustrations on the uncontrollable aspects of our lives, we will be imprisoned to the pain and limited by our views.
When soaking in the vastness of the surrounding big world, we feel insignificant. A seemingly meaningless cog in a giant wheel. Corporations, economies, and governments operate independent of our action; we’re forced to play along. The realness of an immense universe sends us crawling back into the comfort of distorted views of importance. At the point of complete emasculation, our mind returns to a smaller universe, the world we live in—the people we contact and the environments we control. Here we are empowered, free to make choices and improve futures.
#wellness #action #flourishinglife 
Our lives flow between two shores—the freedom of choice and the restriction of givens. Our greatest potential is achieved when we accurately differentiate between those things we control and those we do not. When we concentrate effort to change elements within our charge, we gain confidence and express true freedom. When we fight the givens, kicking against the thorns of our difficult existence, we bow helplessly before fate, quickly succumbing to our tiny existence in the enormous world that spins regardless of our beliefs, hopes, or actions.
Tranquility requires facing uncontrolled adversity, withstanding the misfortune, and then acting with intention, redirecting our lives towards desired futures. We must be courageous, experiencing setbacks but continuing forward, reevaluating needs, and recalculating the course. We move the pieces within the preset rules of the game.
 
We have choices of where we live, who we associate with, and how we spend our money. Each of these choices can widen or restrict the flow of opportunity downstream. A prolonged stretch of crummy choices constrains opportunities, severely limiting escape routes. These choices often are small imperceptible beginnings that bloom into full blown disasters. Small budgeting deficits, increase debt, increase anxiety, and progress into missed payments and bankruptcy. The small indiscretions of spending impacts credit rating, investments, and ability to secure housing. Whether our poor choices neglects relationships, hampers education, relies upon juvenile adaptations or damages health, we narrow opportunities, giving power to elements outside of our control, shifting experience from the glorious freedoms of choice to the hard levees of consequence. We have become the pawn in someone else’s game.

"A prolonged stretch of crummy choices constrains opportunities, severely limiting escape routes. These choices often are small imperceptible beginnings that bloom into full blown disasters."
Desired futures have complex sets of requirements. We can’t demand blessings without paying the cost. A potent combination of courage, skill and opportunity enables achievement. We can become more than the current trajectories of our lives. Our futures are not determined. We can seize opportunities and take destiny into our own hands. We are responsible for who we will become. We must choose the next move, and let the pieces begin to fall as they may, and then move again.
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FLS Link. Self-forgiveness: Genuine self-forgiveness is a process of accepting responsibility, working through the emotions, repairing damage, and recommitting to values.
FLS link. Self-Sabotage: We hurt ourselves. We sabotage healthy endeavors to escape the discomfort of change, settling back into our self-made prisons of stagnation.
Internal FLS link. Victim Consciousness: We learn patterns of engagement. Transactional Analysis defines many of these patterns, giving greater clarity to misguided human transactions. The perpetual victim often overlooks avenues of escape, relying on superficial support for strokes of attention. We can recognize these patterns and provide a more healing response.
Our subjective judgments may misrepresent our ill-intended motivations, sweetening the sour, and ignoring the bitter. We can do better. We can be compassionate because we care.
FLS internal Link. Any Old Excuse: The merry-go-round hell of sobriety and relapse traps many in a perpetual fall. Life graciously provides difficulties to excuse the falls and soften the shame; but the recovery that lasts, sheds the excuse, looks addiction head on, and gets off the frightening ride.
Some things we cannot change; others we can. We must choose how to respond.
Freedom of choice is earned through mulling over possibilities, evaluating conflicting data and then determining a course of action.
Knowing the reasons an event occurs allows for better predicting (and preparing) for the future. Knowledge gives security. We often bi-step the knowledge, assume a cause and enjoy a false security.
External Links:
External Link: How to Achieve Your Goals by Creating an Enemy
mindful link banner. Article on self-kindness
External Link: Evolution: that famous ‘march of progress’ image is just wrong
External Link: Continuity of Future Self Tied to Being Happier in Later Life
Link: We live imperfect lives, slipping below the ideals we hold. We can either make room for the imperfections or distort our vision of reality.
We, like the acorn, have great potential. We, unlike the acorn, are empowered beyond our environments. We can create environments that gives more of the nutrients and protection that we need.
FLS link. Passionate Purpose. We need passionate purpose to energize our flat lives, giving fire to existence and joy to routines.
In the driven charge to become something, we lose the joy of simply being.
Wellness on the Web
Outside link: Inner-explorations and self-discovery
External Link. 10 ways to build mental toughness
External Link: I spent thirty days practicing self-kindness; here's what I learned.
External Link: 5 Prerequisites for Inviting Happiness Into Your Life
External Link: 11 ways we can practice self-kindness
We don't control everything; but do control many things. Through our action, we have significant influence on our future. If we blame frustrations on the uncontrollable aspects of our lives, we will be imprisoned to the pain and limited by our views.


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