I saw a post the other morning asking, “Do you ever feel like the odds are stacked against you?” My immediate reaction was absolutely not.
I know that probably sounds strange coming from someone who has experienced the kind of loss that I have. But losing Dylan and still seeing the world this way are not in conflict with each other. I do not experience my life as something that is constantly happening against me. I think I am always in it: making choices, getting information, changing direction, and learning what works and what does not.
I am obsessive about facts. If something is not working, I want to know why. If I failed, tell me I failed. You cannot build anything useful on top of information that is not true.
What I do not accept is the idea that the facts get to decide the rest of the story. I can lose money and not decide that I am bad with money for the rest of my life. I can make a terrible business decision and not decide that I am a terrible business person. I can be wrong without becoming a wrong person. I can lose someone I love and not decide that the rest of my life has to be defined by grief.
I think we do this without realizing it. We make something an identity, and then we start collecting evidence for it. If I decide I am unlucky, every bad break becomes proof. If I decide nobody supports me, I can have five people show up for me and one person not show up, and I already know which one my brain is going to remember.
I recorded a new episode of The Observation Room about this, and about the two questions I keep coming back to when something happens that I did not plan:
What skill is this trying to teach me?
What do I do now?
I do not know your answers. You do not need mine. That is kind of the whole point. I get to wake up and choose what story I tell myself before the day has had a chance to choose it for me.
Listen to the episode: https://www.michellevaughn.co/podcast/s/theobservationroom/the_odds_aren_t_stacked_against_you_the_observation_room
Michelle