Very few things are within your control.

Very few things are within my control.

The reality is that I can only control my perspective of the world and the things that I do. Trying to control anything else is a complete waste of energy.

Now, you might find that depressing, or you may be inspired by that because it brings with it a sense of freedom to focus on the only things that you can do anything about.

Stuff happens to you in life. Good stuff and not so good stuff, and then a whole lot of ‘in the middle’ stuff. We do not control any of that. But our response is totally on us. How we react is completely our decision.

Victor Frankl says that “between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response”. We get to choose. We get to choose whether we bring joy or terror. We get to choose to bring life or death. We get to choose to bring love or fear.

No doubt, we all want to bring joy and life and love. It can be a challenge to get that right every single time we make a choice and respond to those around us, but we always have access to joy – it comes through doing things for other people. It comes through generosity. It comes through giving.

Choose joy. Choose generosity.