There is an old fable about a man who, whilst out walking his dog late one night, comes across another man who is down on his hands and knees looking for something under a street lamp.
The passer-by asks what the other man is looking for, and is told he is looking for a lost key. The passer-by helps the man search for his key, but after about an hour or so of fruitless searching, the passer-by says: "We've looked everywhere and cannot find your key. Are you absolutely certain you lost it here?"
The other man replies: "No, I lost it in my house, but there is more light out here under the street lamp."
The moral to this story is... stop looking externally for the answers you seek. The answers to e.g.: why you're not living the life you want, or enjoying the fruits of your relentless endeavours, can only be sourced internally. It's an inside job, so now is the time for you to accept 100% responsibility for everything in your life - the good, the great, the bad and the downright ugly - because it has all been invited into your world through your choices and behaviours.
By accepting 100% responsibility, you will be acknowledging that you - and you alone - create everything that happens to you, by what you choose to accept. You are the cause for everything you experience, and so to be super successful, you need to truly understand and resonate with this. When you realise you have created it all, you are empowered and suitably inspired to first un-create and then re-create at will. Let me offer you this little analogy and thought experiment.
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
Imagine your life as a ball of PlayDoh, complete with all the potentiality contained within it; highly malleable fun and joy. And then I ask you to sculpt a teapot out the the PlayDoh. You give it your best shot, but because you've never made a PlayDoh teapot before, the spout is a bit wobbly and the handle keeps falling off. Okay, well that could happen to the best of us, so no harm no foul. But now let's up the ante for example purposes only. Now let's it is crucial to your family's well-being that you succeed in sculpting an adequate PlayDoh teapot. It doesn't have to compete with Michelangelo's 'David' in terms of perfection or anything, adequate will do. What do you do?
I'm betting you ball up the PlayDoh and try (and try) again until you have a teapot that passes muster, yes? You don't quit, you can't quit, because you and your family depend on your best efforts, and so you accept 100% responsibility for doing what is necessary, creating a recognisable teapot in this context. Still with me?
Well, as you have probably guessed by now, both you and your life are the PlayDoh in my cheesy example. If you try and fail... actually there is no such thing as "failing" in Scott-Towers, we call it what it really is... learning. Where was I? Oh yes. If you try and learn, without success to begin with, that's okay - all experts were once beginners too, and you only ruly fail when you quit. Simply ball it up, count it as valuable experience and begin again! And when this blob of PlayDoh dries out, guess what, there's an abundance of replacement PlayDoh in this world, so no excuses, keeping growing!
You are the master of your destiny: blaming and complaining relegates you to passenger status in your own life.
When you make a mistake or err due to a lack of experience, experience, or resources, don't waste time and finite life equity chastising yourself. Your time and energy would be better spent scrutinising where and how the flub occurred, and asking insightful and empowering questions like "What did I do - or not do - to create that outcome?", "What was the thinking behind that decisions and was it resourceful?", "Could I have worked harder, or smarter?", "What can I learn from this outcome?".
Questions like these are positive and soul enhancing, because by answering them, you will be working towards the outcome you were seeking in the first place, whilst learning as much about yourself as the faltering attempt itself. This equals growth for you. By berating yourself, you are simply running around in a circle, on the spot with your hands over your eyes - getting nowhere, accomplishing nothing.
If any area of your life is not where you want it to be choose change. Dedicate some time to sit quietly and ask yourself how and why you have found yourself at this particular juncture. Then un-create the elements you're dissatisfied with, and re-create them into what you want them to be. You have this power and authority over your own life, you just need to realise this and use it.
By self-soothing with bed-rotting or Netflix binges, or self-medicating with alcohol and food, you are essentially looking for the key to your life in an external source shaped like entertainment and comfort. Instead, look inward to learn what your soul truly yearns for, and how best to go about achieving those goals for yourself, because no one can do the push-ups for you.
Let me know if I can help and support you through this journey, but in the meantime live your life on purpose and make shift happen!
Karan x
