The Joy Of Missing Out By Tonya DaltonUzorak

Let me lay a little tough love on you right now. You can choose or let others choose for you. The choice is really yours. Not making a choice is a choice. But so many of us have forgotten that we have a choice—it’s a case of learned helplessness.

Have you ever experienced that feeling of having no control over your day? As if your world is so rigid and made up of so many rules you don’t really get to choose the life you live? That, my friend, is learned helplessness. . . .

The problem lies in when we allow this learned helplessness to take over, because this passivity can lead us to overlook opportunities for relief. A good example of this type of behavior is when a student studies for a test and yet still performs poorly. When it’s time to study for the next test, she may believe there’s no point because “she won’t do well anyway,” so she doesn’t bother.

She seems to forget that for the first test, she went out late the night before or was distracted by an argument with her best friend. She only remembers that she studied and didn’t do well; therefore, studying didn’t help. She feels stuck and doesn’t see any other choice, so she simply stops trying.

It’s not reality that makes us feel stuck; it’s the lens we use to view the world. Maybe you are tired of trying because it feels like it just doesn’t seem to matter. I’ve felt this way too. There are times when we all just want to crawl back in bed and throw the covers over our heads because we are so overwhelmed with the chaotic rush of our days.

We can lose sight of who we are deep inside and what is most important to us. We are so busy struggling and fighting to keep our heads above the proverbial water that we seem to forget we can choose to tread water for a moment. We can allow ourselves a deep breath and time to scan the horizon—we can choose to swim to calmer waters.

When we gift ourselves with the ability to step back and choose, something powerful begins to happen. We strengthen our internal locus of control. In other words, we remember we have the ability to influence our own destiny instead of allowing the current to push us wherever it wants.