There are 3 primary drivers of results in life:
- Your luck (randomness)
- Your strategy (choices)
- Your actions (habits)
Nice tweet from James Clear, the author of the book Atomic Habits.
There is a fourth driver of Results
4. how I respond to what happens
I am reading Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life at the moment. I love the depth and the conviction that comes across from Jordan’s writing (and his youtube videos).
One of the things that really stuck with me from the early chapters was Jordan’s sense that Heaven and Hell are here with us on earth… and that our response to the events of our life can allow them to truly become Hell.
He shared a story of an old man dying of cancer in a hospital. This is tragic. What makes it hell is what is happening between the adult children of the man in the hospital room as he lies dying. There is a bitterness between them and an anger about how the inheritance will be split. The response of these adult children is to make life worse for each other.
Life is Tragic. Humans can make it Hell.
Old man dying is a tragic part of life.
His children fighting over the inheritance is how to turn tragedy into hell.
There is no situation so bad that we cannot make it worse with our own reaction to it. Do we learn from the event, or do we allow it to push us into an emotional state where we make life worse for others because of our own feelings of hurt and anger and desire for revenge.