Be Your Own Creator

~ 2.5 Minute Read.

De­rived from my view of “De­ter­min­isim and Choice” I be­lieve ev­ery­body can choose to take con­trol of their lives.

Re­cap: ev­ery present mo­ment is a sum of its past mo­ments — ev­ery mo­ment of the past in­flu­ences the present with dif­fer­ent weights. Some events may have a big­ger, some a small­er in­flu­ence, but gen­er­al­ly, through a chain of caus­es, ev­ery­thing in­flu­ences ev­ery­thing. And thank­ful­ly (hope­ful­ly) so, since this makes com­put­ing the fu­ture im­pos­si­ble.

You can have one of two re­ac­tions to this 1 : ei­ther you start liv­ing your life su­per pas­sive­ly, be­liev­ing it doesn’t mat­ter what you do any­way, or you re­al­ize you can be your most-weight­ed in­flu­ence in most sit­u­a­tions and take full con­trol of your life, liv­ing as ac­tive­ly as it gets.

The lat­er is def­i­nite­ly the more ex­cit­ing and at­trac­tive, but I un­der­stand the first: This view doesn’t re­al­ly in­clude a “mean­ing of life” and while that may seem con­cern­ing at first it re­al­ly isn’t, be­cause it doesn’t change any­thing any­way. Whether there is a mean­ing or rea­son for your own life or for life in gen­er­al, how would it have any in­fluce if you don’t know it? As a re­sult I be­lieve I need to make up my own mean­ing in life. And if it is on­ly to sa­vor life to its fullest, that is fine, too.

That aside, tak­ing con­trol of your life is re­al­iz­ing you can to a de­gree de­cide now who you want to be in a year and work to­wards that. The sim­ple de­ci­sion of that — giv­en you have the dis­ci­pline to pull through — can be such a huge in­flu­ence on the fu­ture that it can change your life dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

If I say “de­cide who you want to be” I can most­ly on­ly speak for per­son­al­i­ty and be­hav­ioral changes out of ex­pe­ri­ence. “What you want to have in a year” not so much yet, maybe be­cause I still be­lieve that its in­flu­ences are not as much in my con­trol as in­flu­ences on my­self.

Re­al­ize you have the con­trol over your life. Rid your­self of in­flu­ences that hold you back to al­low your own in­flu­ence on it to rise in im­por­tance rel­a­tive to all oth­ers.

Writ­ten in 32 min­utes, ed­it­ed in 10 min­utes.

1
Ac­tu­al­ly there is a hid­den third: com­plete in­dif­fer­ence and not let­ting this ar­ti­cle have in­flu­ence on you at all. ;)