The voice in your head is responsible for a huge portion of your life. Experience is not only, or primarily, what happens to you. Experience is mostly what you tell yourself about what happens.
My parents divorced when I was about a year old. It didn’t shatter me. It bettered me. I never saw myself as a victim of that circumstance. I never told myself it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t about me. It did shape me.
I told myself I have two parents who love me that live differently. I still do. I tell myself how lucky I was to learn lessons early and see the real challenges in relationships and raising kids. I was unbelievably fortunate compared to people in my life who learned the same lessons much later, more painfully, and more expensively.
I saw that sometimes good people disagree. I saw the load carried by single parents and I felt the love. Extended time away from either parent helped me value time with them. Going back and forth showed me how to adjust to changing surroundings and appreciate differences.
The challenge was real. Easy is not how I would describe it. There was conflict, pain, and confusion. But I always told myself the experience served me. I always made my experience what I wanted it to be or needed it to be.
What happens around me is never as important as what happens within me.
Do the work. Embrace the chase.
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