you've got the power

Volition [(n) the faculty or power of using one’s will] is a terrifyingly powerful and wonderfully magical thing when you realize how simple it actually is to cash in on. When you realize that the thing holding you back is yourself, just you, everything begins to change. When you realize that it's you  - not the naysayers, nor the roads untravelled, nor the roadblocks that seem to ubiquitously place themselves in front of your striding feet, but it's actually just you holding yourself back - the world becomes something new.

Once you meet yourself in this way, once you look that well placed hurdle head on, you realize that you are gazing deeply, and simply, into yourself. And through yourself you are gazing into the bright abyss that is life’s greatest and most rewarding challenge - the place where you meet your ambition, your self worth, your empowerment. The place where you don't just acknowledge but actually own your agency, your motivation, your desire. The scary and beautiful place where you embrace all of your abilities, where you become emboldened by your elan, your joi de vivre. The place where you get your gusto, and it sticks to you like the very shadow you were born with.

It is a tremendous gift you give yourself when you accept the reality of what has kept you stagnant — or lost, or trying — for so, so long. There is an incredible and rare type of freedom that comes from realizing, and then accepting that you are what you make yourself.

You are what you make, yourself.

It is a freedom that is frustrating and empowering all at once, heart wrenching and gut turning and head spinningly wonderful. When you look yourself and your life straight on and accept it for what it is - yours - you receive a two-fold payout, both chock full of personal freedoms. First, you learn that you are the reason you have not yet made your life what you want it to be. And then second, you learn that you are the very person - the only person - who will make your life what you want it to be. There is a base-level of self acceptance involved in this process, in this facing of the two sided reality of life, and it is in the shadow of this dual nature we often get lost and run away from self growth.

And so, why do we run away from the freedom that comes with accountability? Why do we allow ourselves to stay on the dark side of our own personal moons, when there is so much brilliant light to guide us just half a rotation away? There is something life changingly powerful in the acceptance of the dual nature of our own volition, of the power we contain as living breathing sentient beings. But often that power feels like too much - like it is so much greater than ourselves, and so we shy away from it. For when we recognize the power we have to make our dreams come true, we also acknowledge our power to flesh out our very worst nightmares. And when we first encounter this realization, just the process alone of taking ownership of all the dreams and nightmares of our past - none the less those of tomorrow - can be daunting, can feel impossible.

But if we force ourselves to look, well, ourselves, square in the (preferably third) eye, we are granted an insiders view at how to be better. We see all the ways in which we haven't been our best, all the ways in which we have often been our own worst enemy. And of course, this can hurt, and can be incredibly difficult if not completely revolting. But those queasy feelings will begin to cease if you can stop looking at yourself as your own worst enemy. Trust yourself, trust the collective psyche, and know that no matter how big the mistake may seem, you made it for a reason. Know that you had to make that mistake - no matter how grave it may have been - in order to gain the insight that mistake provides. And if you can't dig that metaphysical perspective - then recognize the reality that you can only go forward, not back, and that the only person's actions you can control are your own.

allow yourself to realize that
you are both your own worst enemy and your only savior,
all at once.

I know it sounds scary, but once you make the first move it starts getting less bad. And then, after keeping at it, it actually becomes better. Instead of being upset that you make a wrong decision, you realize that you now have an opportunity to make an even more educated, more likely to be right, decision. In fact, you start to realize that it's not even so much about decisions being right or wrong, but about being the decisions. That's right. You must be your decisions. Because you already are - it is inescapable. Whether you know it or not, you are the one making your own choices, regardless of the situation(s) placed on you.

Please understand, these are not choices of the material realm that we are looking at here. These are decisions that are of the metaphysical kind. These are the choices that don't determine our bank accounts but our souls, the kind of choices that transcend almost all individual experience. These are the exercises that determine who we are, not what we are.

If we are going to learn to harness our own power, though, and going forward own our actions and the lessons they teach us, we must learn to forgive. We must learn to let go of our past transgressions, our previous mistakes, and one way we can do this is to look to them for clarity about our motivations. What was it that led us to do the thing that wasn't in our best interest? Not just what could we have done differently, but why didn't we do it differently? What was it we had to learn from that experience, and have we implemented those lessons? And if not, are we ready to begin now?

This process of forgiveness must follow us into the future, too. As we move forward, no matter how aware we may become, we will always make mistakes. We will always have missteps. And in order to stay true to your own self will, to the path you are making with each step - those forward and those back - you must honor each and every one of those mistake, just as you must honor each and every one of your successes. We must come to realize that such negative feeling experiences provide not only important guidance, but are the foil that allow us to see our successes too. How can we know that we've gotten it right until we've gotten it wrong? And how can we know when we get it REALLY right until we get it really wrong?

The more we allow ourselves to accept the inevitability of failure or mistakes in our lives, instead of fear them, the less likely we are to continue to repeat those same failures or mistakes. And in learning from these inevitable missteps instead of trying to pretend they never happened, we also begin to accept our role in such actions instead of trying pretend we had nothing to do with it. The more we do this, the more we start to see that we are the ruler of our own fate, and that while we often may not get to deal our own hand, we are the one - the only one - who gets to play it.