Career Mission's Chief Executive Officer, A. Harrison Barnes as he discussed the need to control our internal world.

Harrison believes that our destinies are shaped by our responses to the situations that we face day to day. Every single one of us is continually facing challenges in our lives.  Some of these challenges are incredibly serious while others are quite trivial.  The results that we achieve in our lives are directly affected by our responses in to these challenges- serious or trivial.  We can choose to respond in either a positive or a negative way.  We can choose to be empowered by what happens to us or be destroyed by it.

Problems are always going to be there. Your strength comes from an ability to respond to these problems in an empowering way that can push you forward, rather than holding you back. Many times you simply cannot control what happens to you.  What you can control, however, is your response to what happens.  No one other than yourself can choose for you how to respond to your own situation.

We often define happiness based on things that are occurring outside of ourselves. Many people, for example, believe that their success and happiness is a direct result of their financial security, or lack thereof. However, when you ask people about the best moments in their lives, the response is almost always about moments like the birth of a child, a marriage, meeting someone special, spending time with loved ones, or taking a walk with someone close to them.  These valued moments and happy memories do not cost money, and are completely irrespective of one’s financial situation. 

There are two worlds out there—the external and the internal world.  The external world involves things like the health of the economy, the health of our company, accidents and other twists of fate that occur.  We have some–but certainly nowhere near total control over what happens in the external world. However, we do have control over the internal world.  The internal world is comprised of our own emotions, how we think and feel about those events that occur in the external world.  It is important that we do everything within our power to control our internal worlds.  We should guard our internal world and take care to use it for ourselves, and not against ourselves.  This internal world is what matters most.