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Hey friend,
Hey. It’s me. These are weird times, huh? Last week was a strange one for me. I was worried about money, confused about the election, lonely, sad, happy, and grateful all at once.
Earlier in the week, my son was having a hard time with his emotions, and I asked him what was going on. He said, “I don’t know what I’m feeling!”
I’ve been there.
Last week, I shared some thoughts on change and growth and how we are all, in a sense, playing a character in life. I think this lesson came to me most powerfully through the experience of building a personal brand and realizing this meant some people thought they knew me when in reality all they “knew” was what I wanted to show them.
And it was a strange thing to me to feel so protective of this character named “Jeff Goins, Writer” and to feel quite afraid when people would occasionally attack him.
But what I have learned is this: As soon as you create something and release it to the world, it ceases to be yours.
This is the very difficult work of parenting in that each day we are training our kids not to need us—that is, if we’re really doing our job. And so, eventually, at a certain point, this person is no longer “my son” or “my daughter.” Rather, they are this person whom I helped bring into the world but who is this complete and wonderful individual entirely separate from me. And as I see them for who they are, not who I wanted them to do or wish they could be, but simply as they are, I am able to love them.
Because, of course, we cannot love that which we are trying to control.
It seems to me that the great lesson I’m learning through this wonderful and sometimes-scary rollercoaster ride of a year is that control is an illusion. The only change is constant, and that can only be exciting or interesting when we relinquish the power we think we have.
I am also noticing how we all, in a way, create the world we inhabit. “Thoughts are things,” according to Napoleon Hill. And these things have the potential to change our lives and our world.
Have you experienced this—how the thought or belief or feeling about a thing can influence your experience of it? We do not see things as they are, as the writer Anais Nin once pointed out, but rather as we are.
These times, for me, are an invitation to go inward, to assess what I can and can’t control, and notice what’s going on in this little world of me that I’ve created.
If I am not this character I’ve created, if I am more than the story I tell the world, then there is nothing to fear and no smaller self to defend. And as I let go of what I can’t control, I am free to create what I want.
How is focusing on what you can’t control keeping you from what you can create?
You only have so much energy to expend. Try to use it wisely.
Jeff
P.S. What do you want to create? Send me your thoughts with a reply.
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