“Why are we lions and lionesses living as mice?” – Brendon Burchard, Motivation Manifesto

I love this quote out of Brendon’s book; because it is a struggle that I see many people have in their daily lives. I have had this same struggle and have routinely asked myself the following question.

Are you going to be Pitiful or Powerful???

I believe this is a decision that each of us has to make before the day even starts, before we put one foot on the floor! We have to understand that WE have a choice on our hands at the start of every day to decide what our world will look like for the next 24 hours.

We have all had those days when we wake up and the first thought we have is one of defeat. We start thinking about the day ahead and we instantly start feeling sorry for ourselves because we HAVE to go to work; we HAVE to go to school; We HAVE to do whatever mundane thing we HAD to do yesterday.

You are not alone in this… I have had those days also. I have woke up feeling frustrated with how my life looked, or upset because I had to do something I didn’t want to do. My first thought was…Why Me??? Why do I have to do this? Why is this my life? Why can’t I have a better (insert just about anything here)? In essence, I was having a BIG OLE PITY PARTY!!!

And where did this line of thinking get me?  Where is it getting you? This line of thinking gets us absolutely nowhere. It actually gets us stuck in a mental tar pit of our own making. A pit that is very hard to get out of and seems to drag us down further with each negative, pitiful thought.

If we want to ever CHANGE….be DIFFERENT…..Be ALL that we can be, we must learn to change our thought processes. We have to realize that we have a CHOICE about what we will focus on. We must wake up and learn to make a decision to be POWERFUL. As we learn to control our thoughts we begin to harness the power given to us by God Himself, and we stop being mice and instead rise up to be lions and lionesses.

A great maturity opens in the human psyche

When we accept that we can control

Our impulses by conditioning our thoughts

And that we alone are responsible

For our emotions and reactions in life

• Brendon Burchard, Motivation Manifesto

We are all very familiar with Pitiful. We have all wallowed in that pit on numerous occasions. But what, you may be asking, does powerful look like?

Powerful is a DECISION. It is a decision to see ourselves the way that God made us – fully equipped to handle anything that we come in contact with. It is the decision that you are going to dig deep within ourselves and find that passion; that desire to have the future we have always dreamed of. Powerful means that we are deciding to do Whatever It Takes to change our situation. It is a decision to come up with a plan and stick to the plan, no matter how uncomfortable. Powerful means stepping outside our comfort zones in order to alter the course of our existence; seeing the future we want and grabbing onto it for dear life.

Each one of us has this decision at our fingertips on a daily basis….on an hourly basis….on a situational basis. It is up to us to determine how we want our day to go. We can take control of our destiny or just be swept along with the current of our daily existence. We can grasp the idea that ONE choice can alter our day….we can choose to pitiful or we can choose to be powerful. Are you going to be the Mouse or the Lion? You DECIDE!!!