“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
-George Bernard Shaw
We were all blind, helpless babies. No teeth, no talking, unable to crawl. The environment provided by our parents gave us the ability to survive and start to grow, but our futures are less determined by our genetics than our early influences. Over time even these early models and inputs lose their power over us and we are primarily he result of one thing: our decisions.
Epigenetics is the study of how certain genes that we carry are activated by external stimuli. These include what we eat (a choice once you are an adult), our physical stimulations (noise levels, smoking, light and other factors we heavily influence), and our mental states (once again, mainly under our own agency). Many of the genetic factors contributing to long life and well-being (or a shorter unhappier one) switch on or off based on what we decide to do on a day to day basis, and are more indicative of wealth and health than the preprogrammed genetic code we are gifted. Nearly one half of our happiness as a grownup is directly created by the compounding of our choices over time.
You choose your life of vitality or victimhood. We all started the same, and studies of sibling have shown that even growing up under the same roof leads to extremely different outcomes because of the individual choices in life, even if genetically identical to begin. Your path in life, your happiness is not out there like a hidden pirate treasure waiting for you to come across it but rather is yours to chose and numerous paths you decide to take have treasure (or tragedy) along the way. You are creating the map yourself, and ultimately get to decide how much the adventure pays off.