What is Your Destiny?

Anything is possible. Anything. You can see it in the faces of the musicians, old and young. Hear it in the ringing voices, feel it pulsing through your veins in time with the rhythm.

But when the music stops . . .

There you are, alone with yourself. Your life, your problems, your unmet challenges. You’ve tried, I know, to break out of the mediocrity, the pain of watching your life pass by with hopes unfulfilled. After a lifetime of striving and a bellyful of disappointment, it’s easy to think that your life, as it is, is your destiny.

What is destiny? Your life, written by some force beyond yourself? Chiseled in stone, unchangeable? Why even fight it when you have no say in your life purpose?

If it were true that your destiny is determined by some outer, powerful force, it would be pointless to fight it. But your destiny is written by someone much closer. It’s written by you.

I know. You’ve tried and tried to have the relationships you want, the success you dream of. If you really wrote your destiny, your dreams would have come true already. This is the truth: You are the one in control. The problem is that you haven’t learned how to write the destiny you crave. Here are common mistakes:

• Waiting for Prince Charming. One of these days, if you continue to live a good life, happiness will descend on you. Prince Charming will show up on his white charger. Your numbers will come up in the lottery. A rich uncle you didn’t know you had will name you in his will. Then you’ll have what you need to live your life purpose.

• Waiting for the green light. When the moment is right, when the kids are grown, when the economy improves, when you shake off this feeling of depression, you’re going to make the grand gesture that will turn your life around for good.

• Playing the second domino. As soon as your spouse gets more supportive, your kids settle down, your boss starts to appreciate you, then you’ll be able to initiate the changes you want.

The secret to writing your own destiny is actually shockingly simple. So simple, in fact, that you might be tempted to overlook it as obvious, but, trust me, you can’t afford to do that. The secret to writing your own destiny is found in the smallest decisions and the shortest of moments. You write your own destiny in key moments – in the one cent moments, instead of the million dollar moments. It’s not in the grand decision of what college you selected, but in how hard you studied on a certain given evening just before finals. It’s not in the grand decision of which job offer you accepted, but in the thousands and thousands of split second decisions you made afterwards as you balanced a file of reports in one hand and a phone and a pen in the other. It’s not in the grand decision of how you proposed, or even, for the most part, who you proposed to, but in the millions of moments in your married life since then, when you were tired, irritable, or overwhelmed by the worries of life.

Roger K. Allen, Ph.D. is an expert in personal transformation, leadership, and teams. His tools and methods have helped hundreds of businesses and tens of thousands of people transform the ways they work and live. To learn more, visit www.theheroschoice.com.