“Do not get upset with people or situations.  Both are powerless without your reaction,” Daniel Chidiac.  I unfortunately was one of those people who took everything personally and felt like there was a “right” way to do things and to behave in all situations.  Even if I hadn’t experienced them myself, I thought I knew what had to be done and I held people to it.  I put my nose in situations I had no business in, things that had no impact on me whatsoever, and when I wasn’t asked.  I liked control and I liked to show people how right I was all the time.  Not an attractive trait by any means, I know and I’ve long since reconciled the need. Regardless, I realize this is another waste of time.  We simply have no control over people and there are those who will fall in line and play exactly by the rules and there are those who will write their own rules and there are those who will go contrary to the rules simply because they can and there are people who just want to see what they can get us to do—they like to see how they affect people. My habit of reacting and correcting people had total power over me—instead of learning to control myself.  The entirety of the world had control over me—I ran around the mountain.

I want to be clear that there is a time and place to voice our opinions and concerns and there is a time to evaluate the people in our lives.  Sometimes we have to make tough decisions and cut those people out of our lives rather than try to control their decisions and reactions.  Sometimes we have to realize when we are the issue and our commentary isn’t needed.  People have the right to live their lives as they see fit whether we agree with it or not. We don’t all fit in the same box and we aren’t meant to.  Time moves too quickly for us to worry about what others do when it comes to things that have no impact on our lives.  Life is about freedom and we can’t truly be free if we run around the mountain telling people what they need to do when we’re heading to the same place—it doesn’t matter how we get there.  Sometimes those contrary people exist to show us another way.  It isn’t worth allowing a temporary situation to dictate how we feel and what we do.  I know I’ve made a fool of myself acting like I knew what path they were on when I didn’t even see my own. 

At the end of the day the only path we have control over is our own.  Reacting to everything only takes away from our own focus and takes away from our own power. Don’t give away power voluntarily toward pursuits that have no bearing on our course.  Keep calm, centered, and focused, and let people run their own race.  Stay in our respective lanes and deal with the course in front of us.  The amount of control we have over our lives is astonishing and the amount of progress we can make, the amount of life we can live, and the lessons we can learn on our own course is astonishing.  That’s the only course we need to know and the truth is, simply living our lives will create ripple effects throughout the world that we can’t begin to imagine.  Just because our footprints fade away doesn’t mean our echoes can’t be heard in the work other people do.  It’s a fine line between the things that matter and the things that don’t—and in terms of legacy, we won’t be here and we certainly won’t have a say in the stories people tell anyway.  So let people live and live our own lives, exactly as we are meant to.