Do You MAKE Life Happen or Does Life HAPPEN to You?

There are people who are living truly authentic lives. Their lives are on their own terms. They have jobs/careers that they are immensely passionate about. They are involved in relationships that are respectful, nurturing, and ever evolving. They are the ones who anticipate living each day. They view mistakes, obstacles, and/or failures as merely life lessons to learn and grow from. They vehemently refuse to bemoan past mistakes. They view wallowing in past mistakes to be toxic in addition to being an utter exercise in futility.

They will not permit others, whether parents and/or other so-called well meaning people to mandate as to they should live. They even disregard such advice. They know that their parents and/or others are seeing things from their particular purview. They insist that such a purview is not theirs. They intend to pursue their own passions and interests, not the preordained passions and interests of their parents and/or others. They desire authentic lives according to their own scripts, not anyone else's scripts. They want to own their lives and make their own destinies.

There are those whose lives are prescribed, even preordained by others. They let others, especially parents and other authoritative figures dictate how they should live their lives, what to believe, and what jobs/careers they should pursue. They have lifestyles that they can barely tolerate at best and/or numbing at worse. They are in relationships which can be classified as colorless, even toxic but they are loathe to do anything substantive to improve or remedy their relationship. They are merely followers of others' scripts, not really making an individual impact on their lives.

As they live the scripts that others mandate to them, they are merely puppets on others' string. They are not living lives of their own making but subscribing to others' prescribed roles and rules as to how they should be and act. To them, the desires and/or interests of others regarding their life choices and life paths are more important, even valid than their desires and/or interests. They are of the school that what is good enough for their parents and other associates is definitely good enough for them. They fail to realize that by adhering to others' scripts, they are living false and inauthentic lives. In this hub, I will detail the three main characteristics of those who make life happen as distinguished from those who merely let life happen to them.

There are people who are proactive. They approach life as participators, not spectators. They simply refuse to let others determine how their life should be. They are the owners of their lives. They insist that others should choose their lives while they will choose theirs. They consider others' mandates for their life path and choices not preordained but based upon their particular knowledge of the situations at hand. They are the authors of their lives and will orchestrate their lives, careers, relationships, and other matters to their particular interest, liking, and/or passion. They will not allow others be the conductors in their lives.

They also believe that one makes his/her own opportunities. They are not of the school that one has to wait for opportunities to occur. They maintain that those who wait for opportunities will be waiting forever. They make themselves noticed by others by taking action themselves, not waiting for others to do things for them. They assert that waiting for opportunitites and other good things to happen is an immature, unrealistic premise to adopt. In their purview, it is also quite futilitarian. They surmise if one wants something, wishing and hoping simply will not do the trick but planning, strategizing, and hard work will.

They contend that they create and make their own destinies. They consider themselves to be the ultimate masters and imprimaturs regarding their life paths and/or choices. They want to be in the driver's seat as far as their life goes. They are not about to be puppets on anyone else's strings. Their mantra is their life, their choice. In relation to that, they take full responsibility and ownership for their particular success and/or failures. If they are successful, they rejoice in it and if they fail, they refuse to make excuses, play the victim, and place blame upon others. They acknowledge the failure, learn, and move on, becoming wiser for the experience.

People who are fearless know that life involves a certain amount of risk. They are unafraid to pursue their particular life path and/or choices even though there may be obstacles. They welcome such obstacles, knowing that such will make them more determined to accomplish their goals and/or realize their dreams. To them, obstacles, hardships, difficulties, and/or other challenges are merely icing on the cake. They maintain that life is not an easy endeavor but that is what make life very interesting, even exciting.

They love to test artificial boundaries and limits, even defying such if they are outdated and/or illogical. They feel that such artificial boundaries and limits as to what and what not to do should be ignored, even questioned and challenged. They will not be conscripted by such boundaries and limits whether it is based upon socioeconomic class, gender, race/ethnic group, and/or other factors. Other people may be bound by such, even living their lives based upon such limitations. However, they are not going to permit such artificial boundaries and limits preclude them from achieving their individual goals and living their best life.

They are unafraid to attempt and do things which others only think and dream about. They refuse to accept the paradigm that they cannot do something because it was not done before. They love to chart new territory. They want to be different and to break the mold even if others regard their actions as strange, different, even weird. They refuse to follow the majority consensus whether it is job/career, lifestyle, or other arenas. They instead to make their individual impact on society and the world in general. They simply refuse to venture out and try new things because others cannot, do not, and/or will not do so.

There are those who have the abililty to make lemonade out of lemons. They simply refuse to be daunted by the more negative aspects of life. They view such negativity as merely incidental and something to be learned from. They do not consider the negative aspects of life to be the end all of their lives. They realize that life contains positive and negative aspects and mature people should be able to effectively cope with both.

They have an upbeat, positive attitude and outlook on life. They realize the utmost importance a positive outlook are to their overall well being. They are aware that being positive means a greater likelihood of having emotional, mental, physical, psychological, even psychic health. They know the relevance of positivity in having a happier outlook in life. They consider being positive extremely instrumental to their success and general quality of life.

They see life as simply exciting, ever changing, and/or ever evolving. They appreciate and are grateful for the gift that is life. They believe that the purpose of their life is to become self-actualized people, having jobs/ careers, relationships, and/or lifestyles which fulfill them and help them to be the very best people they can be. They refuse to remain in a situation be it job/career, relationship, or other arena if they no longer like it or if the respective atmosphere is stultifying, even boring. They are not the type to stay in a job/career, relationship, nor other arenas just for the seek of security, money, status, or for apperances' sake. They must be happy and engaged in what area they undertake or they simply leave it, or even never do nor enter into it.

There are people who are can aptly classified as passive. They adopt a mindset and psychology of powerlessness. They permit others to usurp their power. They do not mind letting others dictate how their lives should be. They maintain that others only have their best interests at heart. They further contend that if they follow others' script as to how their life paths and/or choices should, their lives will be smooth, even secure. They see it as too mindboggling to exert any effort in implementing methodology into living a fulfilled life on their terms. They are in essence slaves and owned as others determine their lives instead of them.

They wait for opportunity to happen. Their philosophy is that things come to those who wait. Their mantra is wishing, hoping, and waiting. They are the type of people who hope that someone will notice them and give them the opportunity and chance they have been anticipating. It is quite foreign to them that they have to create, make, and work for opportunities. To exert any type of effort is unheard of in their particular purview. They are waiting for that proverbial golden, fortunous opportunity to appear and drop in their laps. While they are waiting, life is simply passing them by. They refuse to believe that life belongs to those who create and work for their opportunities.

They feel that they cannot control their destiny.They see their destiny and outcome as predetermined, prescribed, even preordained.Their outlook in life is reminiscent of the Doris Day song, Que Sera Sera, the future is not theirs to see what will be simply will be. If their destiny and/or outcome is positive, then it is the mere luck of the gods and/or heavens. If their destiny and/or outcome is negative- well it is just bad luck, things occurring beyond their control, and/or it was not meant to be. They refuse to take any responsibility regarding creating their destiny and/or outcome. They believe that their destiny and/or outcome are determined by events beyond their control.

People of a fearful mindset see life as quite precarious, even perilous. They believe that life should contain risks. However, they fail to realize that taking risks is an integral part of life. They cannot ascertain that taking risks makes one grow, learn, develop, and/or eventually evolve into better people. They do not acknowledge that without risks, they stagnate, even experience atrophy. They feel that life should contain as little risks as possible.

They are quite comfortable with artificial boundaries and limits. They even believe that they are prescribed, even preordained, existing for the sole purpose of defining and/or keeping them safe. They feel that such boundaries and limits make them realize what they can and cannot do according to such boundaries and limits. They even see how these boundaries and limits make them satisfied within their particular purview. They believe that unhappiness and discord occurs if they dare to venture out, going beyond their prescribed and preordained boundaries and limits. They view it to be advantageous to stay within such prescribed boundaries and limits, considering it to be unwise, even foolhardy to aspire and attain goals that are not in their particular boundaries and limits whether it is gender, racial/ethnic group, socioeconomic class, and/or other factors.

They will not attempt, try, nor do anything that others have not done. They are afraid to be unique because others would consider them to be strange, even odd. They do not want go against the majority consensus and to upset the status quo. They are safe doing what always has been done as they see its validity. They maintain that what is tried and true makes more sense than anything that is new. They are of the school if not implementing nor fixing something that has a history of credibility, validity, and provability. In their eyes, venturing out into unknown territory and doing something that has never been done before is totally pointless, if not an unessential exercise.

They seldom, if ever, see anything good and are always on the lookout regarding seeing the bad. They have the talent of seeing the glass as half empty instead of half full. They are quite adept of creating mountains out of molehills, making situations worse than what they are in actuality. They prefer to concentrate on or rather wallow in the more troublesome aspects of life instead of the beautiful aspects. They see life as a constant uphill, purgatorial battle at best and a tiresome, exhausting hellish struggle at worst. To them, positivity is not in their vocabulary range.

They refuse to admit that their negative and/or gloomy attitude and/or outlook is toxic to their overall disposition and/or health. They will not acknowledge that their negative attitude and/or outlook can interfere with, even harm their emotional, mental, physical, psychological, even psychic health. They do not see that what they perceive negatively about themselves and world around them eventually becomes a horrifically frightening self-fulfilling prophecy. They fail to believe in the adage what one usually thinks, one attracts.

To them, life is one onerous monotony. They believe that life is perpetually the same with few exceptions. They see life as one, long prison sentence from which there is no respite until death. To them, life is merely a penance and a grueling endurance test of the worst kind. They do not view life as majestic, wondrous, nor beautiful at all. They see life as mere happenstance. Many of them are of the school that they would have been better off if they had not been born. They reason that they never asked to be born so life is not a gift but a neverending burden which has to be begrudgingly tolerated. In the vernacular, their life sucks. To say that they hate their lives is the understatement of the century. They are oftentimes in jobs/careers, relationships, and/or lifestyles that they tolerate at best and vehemently detest at worst. They are the ones who complains to others about their particular situations but refuse to do anything about them. They would rather make excuses, be a victim, and/or blame others than to take actual responsibility for their gray, miserable lives.

There are people who are excited about life, adopting a proactive philosophy and outlook. They are of the school that life is truly what one makes it. They believe that one has to make life happen in order to be truly fulfilled. Others believe that their life is beyond their control. They contend that their destines and outcomes are predestined by outside events, not theirs.

They refute that they have control over their individuals lives, adopting a passive philosophy whatever will be, simply will be. As John Milton author and theologian stated, "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven". To paraphrase, life is generally the outcome of one's perceptions, decisions, and/or actions for good or bad. One's attitude towards life influences how he/she sees and approaches life.