1. What you think about
2. What you talk about
3. The kinds of foods you eat
4. The way you move your body
5. The perspective you put on the world
6. The kindness you give to those around you
7. The things you make a priority
8. The things you choose to believe
9. How personally you take everything
10. How hard you try
11. How open-minded you stay
12. The care you take of yourself and your things
13. The people you hangout with
14. How seriously you take life
15. How much control you actually have

When we feel we have no control over our lives, what we're really dealing with is a subconscious pattern or habit that has embedded itself deeply into our core to the point we've become out of touch with ourselves.  Maybe you tried yoga every Sunday and fell off on week three, or tried cooking healthy foods at home to find yourself ordering a large pizza with a side of taters the fifth day in.  We coast through life reacting to everything rather than creating a reaction from everything and then believe we played no part in the outcome at all.
There's good news and there's bad news.
Bad news, you are completely responsible for how happy you are, despite any and all outside circumstances.
Good news, you are completely capable of finding happiness, despite any and all outside circumstances.  The trick is mastering the art of letting go so you have the time and energy to bend and mold what arrives in every given moment and shape it into a life that you want to smother in chocolate syrup and face dive into.
Here's what works for me -

Step One: Let Go Of Your Attachments.
Stop attaching to the idea that you're just "not a yoga person" if all you want to do is bend and stretch your bod-day.
Stop attaching to the belief that your life is pathetic and out of your control.  That every time you didn't stick to something or accomplish a goal it was bound to happen due to how much of an utter failure you truly are.  Like dang girl, take those self-directed claws and cut that little voice out of your head.  Her presence is not needed here, and to be honest, her annoying, soul sucking energy is drowning out the intuitive side of you that's begging to step in.
Stop attaching to the enjoyment of a half-ass attempt, lazy lifestyle, or easy way out if you want nothing more than to live the kind of life that makes you back-roll-jump-kick-strut out of bed excited to tackle whatever you've got in store.
Whether you take responsibility for it or not, you have control over the thoughts, patterns, habits, beliefs and ideas you attach to.  Maybe it's an attachment you were taught through repeating the behaviours of your parents, or an attachment that stemmed from the generation you grew up in.  It doesn't matter.  No matter who you are, or where you're from, you can make the conscious effort to untangle your current attachments and start taking and creating some new ones with complete awareness of what they will bring to your life.

Step Two: You Are Always Choosing.
Every thought, action, word, plan. These are all choices we make every minute of every day.  Whether we realize we're making them or not, they are happening and they are usually just our chain reactions rather than our conscious decisions.
The car behind you speeds up and cuts you off.
Immediate reaction - %&*$ you, you  %@&$!*^ idiot
Conscious choice/thought - Maybe his wife is in labour, maybe he left a batch of McCain smiley fries in the oven (have you ever faced the sadness of a burnt smiley face fry? If you had you wouldn't stop a fellow human from saving the smileys), maybe he's late for his therapy session.  Either way, let it go, you helped him out.

When we get into the habit of being more aware of our choices, we are able to consciously decide to choose the light over the dark or the right vs. the wrong - in turn spreading more light outward and turning up the brightness and lightness inward.  The more light we choose, the more light we gain, and then you throw the whole 'law of attraction' spiel on top of it all and you're practically a walking beam of bright light, and all good things ((like a stranger paying for your matcha latte (thank you stranger) or winning a trip of your dreams) come catapulting toward you to the point you're literally ducking and dodging bear hugs and free latte's from the Universe.
Hello sweet bliss of a free warm beverage.
Note to Self: Buy a stranger a latte this week.  Pass it forward.

Step Three: You Live And You Learn
When you're constantly making a conscious effort to take hold of and spread light through the things that you do have control over, when the things you can't control come trotting along, you have to lean into it.  How open you remain to new experiences and lessons in your life is still in your control.  There will be unfortunate circumstances, bad timing, bad moods and even bad luck.  When face-to-face with a real doozy, live and learn.  Move through it, feel through it, own it, learn from it, but don't let it stop you from continuously choosing the good because this too will one day lead you to something you need or even better, desired beyond your wildest dreams.  Keep living forward, learning backward and stay open to the possibilities that hide in the bags of dirt the Universe sometime's sends to your front door.  If you dig deep enough, you might find a few crystals.
(Or maybe it really is a bad of dirt... but then you see a poor ant colony who's home got destroyed in the passing of a pedestrian.  So you pour the dirt beside their broken home, practically handing them the materials to the mansion of their dreams, and then the Universe sees you ain't playing and starts throwing you some of that good ish.)

Whether it's the time of day you decide to get up, or how heavily you let the opinions of others affect you, everything you do in your life is a choice.  With every decision, you can choose the path that brings you the strongest sense of light back into your life and the lives of those around you, planting seeds of happiness that will bloom further into your life.  The other option: pick what feels easy and fast rewarding, only to find it's casted a shadow of clouds that gather over your head, leaving your life anxiously grey toned.  You can even decide to take this perspective and run with it, or leave it behind in tethered words that erase from your mind in the seconds that follow.  No one can make the choice for you. You have to rise up, grab the handles and start steering your life in the direction you want to live.  The road may be racing and you may not know where it leads, but you can sure as hell stock the car with the right snacks, turn up a sweet beat and follow the direction of the sun dodging the road blocks along the way.
There is no right path, or easier path, just different ones.  Open your mind and your heart and start.


Here's the playlist I'd be blasting from that pink 60's Cadillac convertible -