You Are Not Alone

Sometimes, it feels as if everything is working against you.

You catch every red light when you’re in a rush. Your DVR goes out the second your must-see show starts. You (repeatedly) pick the wrong grocery checkout line when all you want to do is get home.

But other times, the universe — or whatever higher power you subscribe to, if any — gives you exactly what you need.

Coming off a rough night (of a lack of) sleep, I was out of it this morning.

For a variety of reasons, in a variety of areas of my life, I was feeling defeated, and I was feeling like there was nothing I could do to reverse course.

Then, while reading the book “Tools of Titans” by Tim Ferriss, I came across the following quote from Naval Ravikant, entrepreneur and co-founder of AngelList:

“In any situation, you have three options: You can change it, you can accept it or you can leave it. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it and not changing it, wishing you would leave it but not leaving it, and not accepting it. It’s that struggle, that aversion, that is responsible for most of our misery.”

Those three sentences perfectly captured my current situation while also providing insight into how to improve it.

That’s what a good quote can do.

As I’ve mentioned before, when I’m down, I don’t like to do anything. I like to hide away from the world in hopes of time healing my wounds.

But as Ravikant points out, that’s the last thing you should do, because you end up with the worst of both worlds: in pain, yet not doing anything to relieve that pain.

I needed to be reminded of that today.

I needed to be reminded that I am not a victim; that action is power; that I have the power to change.

And that even when I’m ready to act, if I don’t know how to, I am not alone.

The universe has my back. I just have to tune into what it’s saying.

*****

This originally appeared on 100 Naked Words.