Choose Your Attitude

You have been giving away your control.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space.

— Victor Frankl

There are too many variables in our world today. I can't even begin to state the amount of things that are out of our control.

We can wake up one morning and realize that we have been betrayed. We can wake up one morning to find that everything we have worked for have been wiped away. (I know the Nigerian in us will say God forbid to this sha)

We can come out of our rooms to see that the sunny day we planned and already invested to spend at the beach has grown cloudy.

Someone can shit at us or snap at us or cuss at us for absolutely no reason and not even apologize. We can find ourselves at the butt of a not so funny joke.

We can wake up one day to the price of PMS going from ₦167.00 to ₦500.00, or some other government policy that completely scatters the plan we once had. (Oh! If you're in Nigeria, that already happened, didn't it?)

I can go on and on and 24 hours won't even be enough to exhaust mentioning all the things that are out of our control. The world is all but fickle. You admire a blooming flower in the morning only to find that it has withered before the evening. The job you thought was very secure could decide to mess you up and derail plans you had.

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It almost sounds like a hopeless situation now, doesn't it? Except that, it is not!

Guess what? All of these things are not as important as we think they are. It is not a very common knowledge, and perhaps it might be me just going off on my own here, but look, whatever is not in your control doesn't matter as much as you think it does. Anything that is not within your sphere of control should never take away or dictate the very thing that is within your control.

There is ONLY ONE thing that matters. And that is the ONE THING that is in your complete control: your attitude to all the things you cannot control.

How beautiful!

Beautiful, but many people find it difficult to realize this.

You might not be in control of a million things, but you are in control of one thing that can change the effect of the millions of things that isn't in your control. And that one thing is your attitude.

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Your attitude is how you respond to situations. What you say, how you behave, your reaction to unpleasantness and your response to variability. People make the mistake of letting the things that they can't control control the thing that they can control.

They get mad because someone sparks at them, and go on to destroy things they don't have charge over.

People have destroyed relationships, opportunities for growth, broken down doors simply because they gave their control over to things that they cannot control. They forget that, whatever the situation, whatever is happening externally, they have the ability to control the one thing that truly matters; their attitudes.

Whatever the situation, whatever is happening externally, you have the ability to control the one thing that truly matters; your attitude.

Your attitude is what makes the difference when someone hurts you. You can choose how you want to respond. Instead of react, choose an action. Don't let someone else's action dictate how you act, because invariably, it means you are letting them control you. You are giving away your control to someone you can't even control.

When you hear the news and it isn't favorable, you can deliberately choose your own way. When other people are reacting, you can pause, sift through the options of possible responses that puts you in an ideal, more superior and noble position.

The point is, you can choose your action, you can choose your own attitude, you can choose your own way. Once you realize this and start giving that time to make a decision, between an event and your response to it, your personal growth will accelerate beyond your imagination.

In his book, Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl asserted, "Between stimulus and response, there is a space." In that space or gap is when you decide whether you want to give your control away, or you want to choose how you respond to the stimulus. Sadly, many people don't mind that gap. We simply react and then fall into further chaos.

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I know you have been giving your control away for a long time, simply reacting instead of choosing your response, and that's because you didn't know. Now you do. Nothing else matter as much as the attitude you choose. Never, ever let what you can't control control the only thing you can control.

So instead of react to the price of things, pause, mind the gap, choose a response that puts you ahead of the situation, e.g. "How do I raise my income level?"

Instead of react and try to fight back, giving your control to the person who hurt your feelings, pause, mind the gap, choose a response that gives you control over the situation, e.g. "This person is hurt. Hurt people hurt people." OR, "This person doesn't know better, if he does, he'd do better." OR "This person is here to teach me a significant lesson. I'll pay attention and learn."

At every point in life, even when every other thing is out of our control, even when all the human freedoms have been taken away from us, one thing will always remain, and this is the only thing that truly matters, this is the only thing that spells the difference between peace and suffering; the ability to choose our own attitudes.

To your growth,

Abiola Okunsanya,

Handzinspired. ✨