do you create your reality?

Each day you wake up and you are faced with reality.

Did you create that reality?

Well…yes and no.

reality is always co-created

It is overly simplistic to say that “you create your reality.” Yes, you obviously play an integral part in creating your reality, but it is not a solo project. Human beings participate in creating their realities in conjunction with a host of other people, historical givens and ever-changing circumstances/situations.

the hand you are dealt

Let’s state the obvious: you didn’t choose or create your biological sex, race, family of origin, genetic make-up and lots more that is central to your personal reality. Nor did you create the economic, political, historical and cultural conditions that you were born into. That said, how you play the hand that you are dealt, during the ordinary moments of daily life, has an enormous impact on who you become, where you go in life and how you come to see and understand “the reality of how things are.”

actively participating in and creating your life

We can take an excessively passive approach to living our live—or—we can actively participate. When I see clients in therapy for codependency and anxiety in NYC, I always talk to them about a certain type of human freedom—the freedom to choose how we are going to ‘see’ and how we are going to live.

Whatever the circumstances are in life, human beings can decide to live consciously and creatively. This is not a one-time decision; it is a daily commitment and it simply means that you refuse to sleepwalk through life or to rigidly follow scripts written by other people.

Deciding to live consciously and creatively means that you take responsibility for your own thinking, feeling and behavior each day and see yourself as an active participant in, and co-creator of, all that surrounds you. Embracing the idea that life is a creative process puts the ball in your court and repeatedly asks you the question:

Given what the conditions of your life are for today, what are you committed to creating (in your life and in the world) going forward?