Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.
Benjamin Disraeli
1804 – 1881

I admit, I’ve never had a serious weight problem. While I carry a few extra pounds around the middle, I’ve never struggled with controlling my weight. But I realize that not everyone is so fortunate. Our nation has been given a lot of incorrect information about the foods we should eat, and most restaurants and packaged food manufacturers are more concerned with making sales than with safeguarding our health.

A few years ago, Dr. Colleen Rand, an obesity researcher at the University of Florida, asked forty-seven formerly obese men and women whether they would rather be their previous weight or have some other disability. Every one of the forty-seven people said they would rather experience deafness, dyslexia, diabetes, bad acne or heart disease than be obese again. Ninety-one percent said they would rather have a leg amputated. Eighty-nine percent would rather be blind. One patient said: “When you’re blind, people want to help you. No one wants to help you when you’re fat.”

Dr. Rand cautioned that her study group consisted of people who had gone to the extreme length of undergoing surgery to lose weight, so they might have suffered more from obesity than others.

I can’t imagine life without eyesight. I can’t imagine the problems a person would face after losing a limb. If I were asked to choose between blindness and obesity, I wouldn’t hesitate to answer “obesity.” My logic? I feel like obesity would be within my ability to reverse. Loss of eyesight or a leg would be permanent.

But this lesson isn’t actually about obesity. It’s about control. Psychologists say we either have an internal or external locus of control. If you have an internal locus of control, you believe you’re responsible for your own welfare. An external locus of control means that you think others are more responsible for what happens to you. Like most things in life, these characteristics aren’t mutually exclusive; most people have a predominate disposition to one or the other but show some exceptions in their behavior.

Many things happen in life that are totally beyond our control. But the more you recognize that your circumstances in life are a result of all the choices you’ve made, the more in control you will feel.

Feeling in control of your circumstances is life-changing. Once you fully accept that you control your life, there are no limits to what you can achieve.

When you accept that you are in total control, you take full responsibility. You give up being a victim, making excuses and placing blame. But you gain something more important: the freedom to be you.

Choices are the hinges of destiny.
Pythagoras
c. 570 – 495 BC

Copyright © 2013 John Chancellor