“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

-Lao Tzu, founder of Daoism

Your fate is not wheeled by nature or nurture. Your fortune is not set by genetics or circumstances. Your life is only sealed by you. You are the writer of your story, the director of your act, the producer of your stage.

Your life is the result of three themes: your thoughts, your experiences, and your environment. You may not always have the force to control it all, but you do have the power to change it all. When you change your thoughts, you change your experiences. When you change your experiences, you change your environment.

Change Your Thoughts: Change Your World

Not why, but who.

How do you create the longest-lasting changes in the shortest time?

It isn’t by understanding the reasons behind your behavior, or your emotion, or even your beliefs. It isn’t even by changing the way you act, feel, or think. It’s by changing your core identity—the meaning of your life.

You do not have to accept your past as your future. You can change your present in a single moment. All it takes is that one Ah-Ha, that one Blinding Flash of Insight, that one satori. When your mind sees what you have never seen before, your heart creates what you never have had before.

Create Your Experiences: Create Your Life

Not what, but how.

How do you create the most powerful transformational experiences in the safest way?

You only evolve through intense life experiences that shatter your shell and challenge your will. You grow the way muscles do, with weights that break the fibers of your being. You stitch those stretched sinews stronger; you trust these torn tissues tougher. You evolve, or, you die.

You do not have to wait for near-death experiences to awaken you to life. You can consciously choose thought experiments that imbue you with the breakdowns and breakthroughs of the life-changing context, without the danger and distress of a life-threatening crisis.

Choose Your Environment: Choose Your Destiny

Not when, but where.

How do you change the people and the world around you?

You don’t. You can’t. You see, people do not resist change, but they do resist being changed. If your happiness is dependent on some person or some situation changing, then you have given up your own power to someone or something beyond yourself. The moment you blame anyone or excuse anything, you let go of your responsibility. Responsibility is the ability to respond, to react, to recreate. If you do not take responsibility—complete, full, sole responsibility—for your life, then you will never have a life.

It is the weight of responsibility that gives us the light of freedom. It is that light that we shine, through the lives that we live, that change people. It is the people that change the world. So, how do you make the change that you want? By being the change the world needs.

You do. You can. You will. You have. You are.