You Define You

February 16, 2017

Life is not “full of ups and downs”.

Life IS ups and downs.

The yin-yang symbolizes how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.
I’ve been learning about Qi, or Chi, and the first lesson I picked up is that everything—good and bad—is part of life. We should acknowledge that it all exists.

EVERYTHING.

So often, people get caught in what I’ve been calling “the pitfall of positive thinking”: pretending like the bad doesn’t exist.

That’s insane.

Pretending something doesn’t exist as it stares you in the face amounts to delusion. It does no good to deny truth, which is what that approach is. You aren’t living in reality, if you simply say bad things aren’t real.

But you have to ask yourself: What power am I going to give the bad?

Facing bad stuff is part of life. Life is uncertain. Life can test us, push us to the limit, and throw some knee-buckling curveballs. But, we each have the powers of self-control, self-determination, and autonomy. We have the power to control our actions and reactions.

You decide who you’ll be when things are down. I can decide to remain myself, even if life is acting a fool. And the same goes for when things go well for us.

Even when things knock us off course, it’s not the end of the world. Like the saying goes: A setback is really a setup for a comeback.

There are all kinds of ways to overcome. There are alternative strategies in Life, Business, and Sports.

It just requires a touch of mindfulness, taking a second to “rise above the maze” to get a better view of the situation and your place in it.

Here’s the thing: you may be going through something, but you’re not it. So often, people forget that fact and get consumed by outside forces.

Situations don’t define you.

You define you.

Tell ’em, Dr. Bailey:

That’s what my ALL IN approach is about: being 100% you, regardless of the situation. That’s what MAKE YOU HAPPEN is about: Not giving in to distractions.

It helps to know what you want life to be—my advice is to figure that out first. Then, direct your actions to that goal.