Life is What You Make It

One day, I decided to take to my Instagram stories and ask my online family to complete the sentence: ‘Life is…’ and I got some interesting responses, some of which were:

• ‘Uncertain’
• ‘Challenging’
• ‘Hard’
• ‘A blessing’
• ‘Up and down’
• ‘Tiring’

Why is this relevant?

What really stood out for me was how many people said life is tiring, exhausting, hard, and challenging. And none of these are wrong; it’s the truth and reality of the individual responding. There is no right or wrong answer, my intention was to understand how my follower’s categorised life. Because, essentially, life is what you make it. Life is whatever you choose for it to be. And you might be thinking ‘LaYinka, I don’t choose my tests or trials and life IS hard for me.’ I’m not referring to the things that happen to you, because we all know that’s completely out of our control.

Life is what you make it

So, it’s true, you may not have control over the external circumstances, the blessings, the tests, the joys, and the trials. But what is within your control is your interpretation and perception of the external.

Let me give you an example: let’s say we have two people who may experience identical scenarios in their lives and the only difference is how they define life. So, we have Sumaya who may perceive life as hard and on the other hand, we have Aliya who perceives life as a gift. These two will experience life very differently just based on their approach. Even if things that “aren’t” hard, for Sumaya life will always feel like a burden no matter what. And for Aliya, even when she’s going through some hard stuff, she approaches life from the perspective of it all being a gift, some sort of blessing.

This is your superpower

Regardless of whatever’s going on outside of yourself, life is whatever you choose for it to be. And you can empower yourself by taking back control, my lovely. Take back control of how you view and experience life. Your superpower is that you can decide how you’re going to experience life from this point on.

The beauty of it is that once you’ve mastered this superpower you can expand it to all the areas of your life.