A portion of Chapter 13: Create A Life You Love

You can’t just snap your fingers and have the perfect person show up on your doorstep. (If you could, you would have done that a long time ago, right?) It feels like you’re at the mercy of an infuriating swirl of God, timing, and your future person (wherever they are), and you just have to wait until they all miraculously come together.

Maybe you’ve had a few serious relationships with people you thought could be “the one”—they were almost it, so close, but just not quite. No matter how much you squinted and tried and hoped you could make it work, you finally had to admit to yourself, and then to them, that you knew this wasn’t it.

Or maybe you’ve put yourself out there—you’ve gone on a ton of first dates that never seem to turn into more. You know the right person must be out there somewhere, but the more “wrong” people you meet, the harder it is to hold on to hope.

This type of disappointment can happen in many different areas of our lives — not just our relationships. We spend time and effort figuring out what we want and making just the right plan, but when we finally convince ourselves to take that first brave step forward . . . crickets. Nothing. The thing we so badly want does not happen. It turns out that it’s totally outside our control, or at least it feels that way.

This might seem like a dagger to the heart of the idea of Create A Life You Love. How are you supposed to create a life you love when you’re doing all you can and it’s not working? How are you supposed to create a life you love, to make decisions creatively, to exercise your authority over your life when it turns out you can’t actually control all the factors?

You can’t make that person love you, you can’t make that company hire you, you can’t make yourself get pregnant, you can’t make that house be available, you can’t make that person be friends with you. It might feel like you’re back in a holding pattern, praying for the life of your dreams to find you and feeling helpless to do anything else.

I know how consuming and disheartening that helplessness can feel—but recently, I’ve been learning some helpful tools for moving forward in these situations. These lessons have come from an unexpected source: my daughters Annie and Quinn.

Annie and Quinn are three, and they have strong opinions about everything. The other day, Annie was running with it. I asked her to stop, I told her to stop, I more firmly told her to stop. “NO,” she told me, so decisively and confidently I couldn’t help but be proud. And then I was back to being frustrated. As a parent, it is so irritating how often your kids will not do what you’ve asked them to do.

But I’ve been learning that boundaries aren’t about what the other person does or doesn’t do. Boundaries don’t require the other person’s compliance at all. Boundaries are about what you do.

I reminded myself of this, took a deep breath, and said, “Annie, I cannot let you run with a pencil. It’s not safe. If you can’t listen, I’m going to take it away.” I gave her one more chance, and then I went over and took the pencil away.

I can’t control what my kids do. I can’t control what anyone else does. I can only control what I do in response. I get to decide that if my child is doing something dangerous, I am going to step in.

The same principle applies to the other stubborn parts of our lives. We can’t control every circumstance. We can’t tell another person what to do. But we can decide what we’re going to do—and we have a variety of options to choose from when an area of our life is just not going according to plan.

Quit

One of your options is to quit. You can throw in the towel, stop trying altogether. You can decide that maybe you’re just not meant to be married, maybe there isn’t a person out there for you. You can decide that while you’d love to have a career in music, it’s just not happening, so you’re going to make the choice to walk away. You can stop trying to get pregnant.

I’m rarely a fan of quitting. In fact, I’m much more likely to hold on too long than to quit too soon. But that’s because I’ve decided I’d prefer to live with the pain of having tried too long and too hard only to find that I wasn’t able to get what I wanted, rather than always wondering what could have happened if I’d just tried a little harder. I’d rather be flat-out rejected than live in the shadow of the what-ifs.

But sometimes, quitting is the kindest, healthiest thing you can do for yourself. Or maybe you don’t have to quit permanently, but you do need a break. 

Just knowing that quitting is an option can be empowering. Only when you realize that you can stop do you have the power to choose to keep going.

Keep Doing What You’re Doing

Another option is to keep trying—to keep doing exactly what you’re doing and just do it longer. Sometimes, the reason some- thing hasn’t happened yet isn’t because you’re not good enough, or because you’re doing it wrong. It’s because it just hasn’t happened yet.

When I was in journalism school, the meteorologist from our local television station came to one of our classes as a guest speaker. She told us her career story, including how she sent out 199 applications before she finally got her first position.

It took her two hundred applications before someone finally said yes. But this didn’t mean she wasn’t talented. It didn’t mean she’d done something wrong or that something was wrong with her. Every station had different needs and different circumstances, and for some of them, she just wasn’t the exact right fit. 

She knew the rejections weren’t personal, so she kept trying. She kept knocking until a door finally opened—and once she got in, other doors opened more and more easily for the rest of her career. The first door might have been a doozy, but all it took was one.

I love this story and I think of it often. When we’re rejected, or even when we’re not immediately accepted, we often think that we must have done something wrong, or that there must be some- thing wrong with us. We assume that if we were the right girl for the job, if we were good enough, if this was going to happen for us, that the door would have swung open for us right away.

But most good things take time. Even if a situation ends up being exactly the right fit, it still might take time. ...

Change Tactics

Another thing you can decide to do is change tactics. If you’ve been trying one way for a while, it might be time to examine your efforts and see if there’s anything you can do to make them more effective. Maybe you could rework your resume or try calling instead of emailing, or maybe you could switch to a different dating app or try going out with people who are not your usual type.

There’s a quote that most people attribute to Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Okay, that’s not the actual definition of insanity, and it’s also likely that Einstein never said that.

But at some point, it does become silly to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results. If you’re not getting the result you want, it might be time to change tactics.

There are going to be aspects of your life that you can’t control, but you can control what you’re putting into the equation. Re-evaluating and making some changes to what you’re putting in might lead to a different result on the other side.

Ask for help

When we’re doing everything we can and it’s still not working, that’s a great indication that it’s time to ask for some help. So many of us think we should be able to figure life out on our own. But that’s just not the truth.

Over the last ten years or so, I’ve learned that strength isn’t proving that I can do it on my own. It’s knowing that I don’t have to and then surrounding myself with the best people, resources, and tools possible—especially in areas of my life that I care about deeply.

If an area of your life isn’t going the way you want it to, this might be the perfect time to ask for some help. That might look like reading a book, taking a class, or attending a workshop. It might look like enlisting the help of a coach, mentor, or therapist. 

It’s hard to ask for help, and it can sometimes even be expensive. But what’s this area of your life worth to you? How badly do you want it to be different? That’s a question only you can answer. ...