You are powerless to the whims of planet earth. You’re just a spec that is around for barely a blink of its planetary eye.
The weather cares not for your wants and desires, puny human.
So much of your daily environment is out of your control that it almost seems foolish to let an uncontrollable problem ruin your day.
When life rains on your parade you have two choices: be angry and upset, which is the most common response, or make a conscious choice to laugh and let the problems roll off you.
The next time that happens keep this quote in mind from the Greek stoic, Epictetus:
We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.
Here’s how I’ve applied this philosophy and learned to start loving Texas summers.
It’s a beautiful day outside
I’ve lived in Texas for most of my life. The summers here are insanely hot. Like 40 days in a row of 100+ degree weather, hot.
There’s nothing like sitting down in your car and accidentally make contact with the metal part of the seatbelt that’s been cooking in 100-degree heat for hours.
Short of becoming God, there’s nothing I can do about the weather. Instead, I find ways to make the summers enjoyable.
A classic activity here in Austin is to drive to a little college town called San Marcos, pack a cooler of beer, and float down a river. You rent 2 tubes, one for yourself and one for the beer, and relax as you float all your problems away.
But summer breeds insecurities. Very few people like how they look in swimsuits, myself included. I used to wrap myself in that insecurity blanket, refuse to do anything that involved taking my shirt off and proclaimed summer as the worst time of the year.
I’ve since changed my mindset. Now I use that insecurity as motivation to hit the gym five times a week.
No one is born with a killer body. Every person you see with washboard abs had to work hard for them.
All you see is the end result: their 6-pack abs and confident smile.
You don’t see the hundreds of hours they put in the gym. You don’t see them having plain chicken and broccoli for dinner for the 5th night in a row.
The only thing standing between you and a great summer beach bod is the exact thing that stands between your desire to become a great writer and actually becoming a great writer.
You gotta put the work in, pal.
My outlook on summer drastically changed after I started working out. Suddenly I looked for any excuse possible to start taking my shirt off.
My point is this: it’s easy to remain stuck in your ways and never reevaluate your points of view. There’s something comfortable about a long-formed opinion.
But it’s also easy to change that mindset. Summers can suck, or they can be your favorite time of year.
The choice is up to you. To me, summers aren’t so bad anymore.