Swimmers who imagine their hands are paddles, for instance, swim faster. Are their hands paddles? No, but the premise helps them swim faster. The degree to which you hand over to fate or to which you take responsibility for your life determines inevitable results.

It’s interesting how, when arguing the fate or destiny question, people often point to other people and circumstances that are not their own…in other words hypothetical examples. My experience is that when people stick to examining their own lives they can see the patterns of experience and also, if they delve deep enough, how their own beliefs, attitudes, behaviours, focus, etc are responsible for what happens in their lives. The more they accept responsibility, the more they are able to affect positive change and outcomes in their lives.

 It’s not just a mystical premise, but a scientifically established one too, that we not only manufacture those perceptions internally but also have control over them. And that how we see things determines our responses, and that our responses – or choices – strongly influences how things unfold from there.

Also, in the creative development work I have been involved in for 25 years, we see the “proof” of the premise that we create our own reality, not just in terms of perception but also in terms of outcomes. Just one example is patterns of experience where certain experiences repeat in a person’s life based on, we find, beliefs they hold. Anyone with a basic level of self-awareness can identify consistent and repetitive experiences around themes like relationships and health and finances, etc.

You’d be surprised how many habits you have, good and bad. In fact, you could go as far as to say your habits rule your life. They may have been influenced by past circumstances, but you now re-enact them, and you now can change them, too.

A system we use called Dysfunctional Formation reveals that every time a person goes for something and doesn’t get it, they take a predetermined set of steps in creating their “failure”…that they are 100% responsible in the outcome.

So how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go? We have conflict deconstruction processes that show people how they create the conflicts they are in. And on it goes. The more we look at what is going on in an actual person’s life, and not a hypothetical person’s life, we see more and more evidence of their power and responsibility in what they create.

Are we the absolute creative force in our own lives? As unlikely as our hands are paddles! But if you are up for taking responsibility for your life you’ll be amazed to discover how deep the rabbit hole goes. And how much power you have over your own experience of life.

William Whitecloud