“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” 

~ Jim Rohn

How many of you feel you are at the whim of someone else?  That your life is being dictated by other people…your husband, his ex-wife, your kids, your step kids, your parents, your boss?  And you’re running around with your hair on fire trying to please everyone…Or that you are standing on the sidelines of Life, waiting for someone to hand you an engraved invitation to join in…

And when you fall into bed, exhausted and spent…your brain won’t shut off because all your focus has been on other people or you’ve been standing on the sidelines watching other people live… and you wonder why you are where you are and not where you thought you’d be.

I want to tell you that I have been that person.  I want to tell you that I waited and waited for my ex husband to give me that engraved invitation.  I want to tell you that I was that person running around with my hair on fire trying to please everyone.  I want to tell  you that I was the person that went to bed wondering why my life was no where close to where and what  I imagined it to be.

And I want to tell you that I am no longer that person.  Funny as this sounds, but when I kicked the wasband out for good,  I remember Dr. Phil shouting in my head, “WHO. IS. DRIVING. YOUR. BUS?”  It’s as if I woke up from a very bad dream…and I had to ask myself, “who was driving MY bus” and “why was I a passenger on MY bus instead of driving it?”  I even questioned if I was actually on MY bus or if was I on someone else’s bus?  Certainly, there was a time in my life when I walked through my every day experience as if I were walking through fog as thick as pea soup.

As I swirled around in my divorce drama, I remember describing it as if I were shipwrecked on a deserted island and I had no compass…and I was pretty much clueless on how to fix my broken ship…at first I thought I wanted to find a way back…but then I realized that I couldn’t go back because  that’s not where I was going.  I had to find a way to go forward and that meant sailing my ship…or driving my bus…in a brand new direction…and that was scary!

As dawn broke over my marble head, there was a poem that helped me set my own course…and I copied it and taped it to my bathroom mirror…this poem became the first thing I read in the morning and the last thing I read at night:

Invictus

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

~William Ernest Henley 

I ask you – who’s life plan are you in?  Your life or someone else’s?  Are you driving your bus or just a passenger?  Or worse, are you a passenger on someone else’s bus?  Do you have an unconquerable soul?  Are you the master of your fate?  Are you the captain of your soul?

I look forward to hearing from  you!

Blessings,

The Bonus Mom