What happens to you is actually up to you

🙅‍♀️No, I do NOT want you to give up! 🙄

🫵And let me tell you something else – as much as you might want to, feel like there’s no alternative and (worst of all) that you’re justified in doing it – you don’t actually want to give up, either. No matter how bad it seems.

What happens to you: Well, I gave up

14 years ago today I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

An MRI showed ‘abnormal areas of prolonged T2 signal’ and a spinal tap showed too many oligoclonal bands ‘consistent with a finding of multiple sclerosis’.

Second and third opinions confirmed it.

THWAP!

MS
For life
No cure

I didn’t give up all at once.

I tried the support groups, signed up for the newsletters, made dumb decisions that punished the people who love me and found myself awash 24/7 in self-pity.

‘Why me?’ when I have so much to give, to do, to offer!?

Eww

‘Why me?’ is the gateway drug of giving up.
It’s addicting. Hard to stop.

I know. I used it.
A lot.

And here’s what I know from deep personal experience with ‘Why me?’:
◉ Ask it and you’ve just accepted your invitation to use it as your excuse for everything.
◉ Ask it and you’ve just opened the door to your victimhood.
◉ Keep asking it and you’ll stay right there.

Right there – wherever you are. Stuck.
⁕ Giving nothing.
⁕ Doing nothing.
⁕ Offering nothing.
⁕ Getting nothing.

🤷‍♀️😡Except excuses and anger.

I lost a few years playing the victim.
YEARS.

Yeah, MS sucks!
It’s physically depleting (and humbling), emotionally exhausting and outrageously, INSANELY expensive.

But none of that is as bad as victimhood.

I know.
I lived it.

You are not what happens TO you

🎯We are never in control of what happens around us, but we are ALWAYS in control of how we each respond to it.

Still, you and I both know people IRL, see them on social media, watch or read about them in the news – all over the world – living completely reactionary lives.

Every plan they make – subject to and immediately dependent upon circumstances that actually have nothing to do with them.

The Pareto Principle in action.
80% of their lives being the product of the 20% of someone else’s action, experience or decision they’ve accepted as having authority over their own.

That used to be me.
And it’s how I know – it doesn’t have to be you.

My life changed 14 years ago.
But my life was changing before and has continued to change since.
And whether it’s good or bad is MY choice.

It can be yours to.

———————–
👋I’m Gretchen

👉I am a career strategist and leadership development consultant on a mission to teach you to find what you love without losing yourself in the process.

🎯I create sane strategies that produce serious results.

=======================

Ways to work with me:

• Coaching:
  • 1-Hour Coach
  • RAM Fitness
• Consulting:
  • Team Building
  • Leadership Development
• Public Speaking

=======================

Connect with me:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gretchenskalka/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGqauUcZo_q0Pz9JbMDC4QQ
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/skalka/