“You become what you give your attention to. If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will.”
– Epictetus
What do you give your attention too? Negativity? Sugar? Family? What you can’t change? The job? Your health? When you take a moment to consider this quote forcing the pause on the tape of your life, it made makes you wonder. Where are you placing your attention or is someone else doing for it? If they are, is it really what you want?
Once we’ve found what we give our attention, who is control of that direction of attention, then there’s empowerment we can have in what you can do with it. Then it really becomes as simple as choosing a different focus or staying with the one you have in front of you.
But there is also power that others can have if you don’t make choices for yourself. Someone else can find the same power or formal authority of what you see or choose if you don’t seize the power for yourself. No one can have power of you, unless you let them. Even when we find ourselves in captivity or against the wall, there is a choice. Even when we seem to be completely powerless, we have a choice.
I’ve been thinking about this quote for a while now. It fits with the theme of helping ourselves with the capacity to do what you love to do and are motivated to do that I have started this weekend off with. We lose capacity for our favorite things to do, when we let others make choices for where we spend our time. We have power in making sure that doesn’t happen, by making the choice for ourself before someone else is given implied authority for us.
I hope you’re weekend continues to be, YOUR WEEKEND! Not what someone else wants it to be. Thanks for reading!
✌🏻 Shawn
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