88. We Are What We Choose to Become

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones — “We Are What We Choose to Become.”

Carl Jung once said, we are not what happens to us. We are what we choose to become. I think people have a lot of voices in their head trying to tell them who they are. Some voices are louder than others, and for a lot of us, the voice that is the loudest is the one that tries to tell you that you can never be better than your worst moments.

On the other hand, some of us like to succumb to the voice that says we are God's gift to humanity.  But I believe there is a voice inside of us that doesn't tell us who we are at all but rather gets excited about who we can be. The little voice is the loudest. When we are young, it looks at all the world and tells us that maybe we can be an important part of it.

But time takes a toll on all of us experiences, good and bad fuel the other voices inside of us. And as we age, hope for the future seems a little less relevant when your life has been fairly lived out. But something I find beautiful is that we do not have to define ourselves by our past. Other people may choose to do that, but the opinions of others have never been more than just an opinion.

When we think of ourselves, instead of thinking about who we are and what we've done, consider who we can be.  There are parts of us that are probably never going to change, but I think we sometimes mistake which parts of us are not going to change. Sometimes we mistake certain actions for unchangeable fixtures in our lives.

People like to latch on to thinking that they're always going to be a heavy drinker or they're always going to lose their temper, or they're always going to be unloved. Actions are changeable.  Situations are changeable. It's only core personality traits that are not, but personalities do not do much to being bad or good.

They simply are. A head in the clouds dreamer can be a total pothead that does nothing with their dreams, or they can be someone that takes action on those dreams and gets others excited about them too. A passionate man can be an abusive jerk, or he can be a force to fall behind as he leads the way through difficult times.

The real question in life is not who you are or what you have done, but who you choose to be going forward. Unfortunately, we can't change the past. It's done and there's nothing we can do about it. We can drag the past into the present by allowing all the terrible things that hurt us to dictate our actions into the future where we can let them stay in the past. 

So who can you be? And more importantly, what do you want to be? For every last one of us, there's a version of us out there that is the best version. That best version is not going to necessarily look like someone else. You know that best version may not even be rich or famous. The best version of ourselves might be a protector of the weak.

It might be a warrior for something that needs to be changed. It might be someone that can make everyone around them feel loved and appreciated. At one point in my life, I wanted to be a captain of industry. I wanted to be intimidating and impressive to people around me. I wanted to have all the nice things to prove I was successful.

There were two problems with that though. One was that I don't have the relentless drive to win the way men like that often do. And secondly, at the end of the day, that's not really who I wanted to become. I don't think you could even argue that that would have been the best version of myself. The best version of myself isn't defined simply by the money I make or the things I own.

The best version of myself will offer hope to the people around me. The best version of myself will not make myself better so much as it will make the people around me better. The best version of myself will make use of my distractible head in the clouds personality and do something good with it.

Don't let the past smother your opportunity to become the best version of yourself. Bad things happen, but bad things don't also have to be given the power to consume our lives and dictate our actions. If someone ever did something atrocious to you, their power over your life is expanded when we let their actions destroy our lives.

There's a movie I like called Once Upon a Time in the West. And in it, there's a beautiful woman with a difficult past that included some time spent as a prostitute and a brothel. At one point, she's confronted by a man that she is expecting to rape her and rob her. When she says something that I find really poignant, she says, I'm here alone in the hands of a bandit who smelled money.

If you want to, you can lay me over the table and amuse yourself and even call in your men. Well, no woman ever died from that, and when you're finished, all I'll need will be a tub of boiling water and I'll be exactly what I was before with just another filthy memory. I know that overcoming terrible things is not so simple as snapping our fingers.

But there comes a point where we get to choose to let the past stay in the past or not. I think the real tragedy is less about whatever atrocious things were done to a person, but more so when a person's spirit is so thoroughly broken by it as broken as our spirits may be. We don't have to stay that way.

A fist fight is only lost when someone doesn't get back up again. When we let go of the past, we can shape the future again. We escape the prison, so to say. When we stop allowing the past to hold sway over our future, we can finally ask ourselves, what version of us will shine the most brightly? Who can you become?

You may be starting out in life, or you may be at the end of it, but either way, you can choose to be the best version of yourself starting now. Because tomorrow is another day. This is Skipping Stones— “We Are What We Choose to Become.”. You can find this podcast anywhere you choose to listen to podcasts. For more information about me, feel free to visit skippingstonessr.com.

And if you enjoyed the show, please like or subscribe. If there is a topic you would like me to speak on, please feel free to email me. At info@skippingstonessr.com, new episodes will be released weekly every Monday.