Some seasons knock the wind out of you.

Maybe it was a job loss you never saw coming. One minute, you were planning the next quarter. The next, you were turning in your badge. Or maybe you’ve been quietly searching, pouring yourself into applications and hearing nothing back. The world keeps spinning, but you’re standing still. Disoriented. Unmoored.

Moments like that have a way of making us feel powerless.
Like life is just happening to us.

But here’s something I believe—and something I’ve learned through my work with iPEC® Energy Leadership principles:

We are observers and participants at the same time

We don’t always get to choose what happens. But we do get to choose what we do next.

This is where fate meets free will. It’s not about total control, and it’s not about giving up. It’s about holding both truths: some things happen beyond us, and we still get to choose how we meet them.

There are forces beyond us—decisions made in boardrooms we never entered, health issues that come out of nowhere, family demands that reroute our plans. That’s real. That’s life. And pretending we’re in control of it all only adds pressure and shame.

But it’s also true that we hold power.
Maybe not to fix it overnight.
Maybe not to get what we want when we want it.
But power nonetheless.

We get to choose how we respond.
How we tell the story.
How we care for ourselves while we figure it out.
How we remember who we are when everything feels shaky.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

That’s another core principle from iPEC® that continues to ground me. Pain will come. It’s part of being human. But suffering is what happens when we internalize that pain as permanent, when we believe we have no say, and when we forget we still have agency, even in uncertainty.

Free will doesn’t mean pretending everything’s okay. It doesn’t mean turning pain into a productivity plan.
It means asking:

What now?
What still matters to me?
What part of this is mine to hold—and what part is mine to release?

Sometimes steering looks like bold moves—ending something, starting over, speaking out.
Other times, it’s quiet—resting when your instinct is to hustle, pausing before reacting, staying kind to yourself when your inner critic is loud.

Either way, every small choice is a hand on the paddle. Every action, however uncertain, is proof that you’re still participating in your own story.

And if it feels like the wave has already hit, and you’re just tumbling underwater, start here:
Name one thing that’s still true about who you are.
Start with that. Anchor in it. That’s how steering begins.

We don’t get to choose all the tides.
But we are still the ones who show up in the boat.