PhotoCredit: Free Fall
I rather belatedly watched Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse over the weekend. It's fun, especially if you are at all inclined to the notion of alternate universe's. I don't spend much time thinking about other realities beyond this universe. That said, I believe we have infinite potential to create new realities in the here and now. Every moment of every day we are given permission to choose. The choices we make set us on course to a specific reality. Our lives are one big pick-a-path adventure story.
A key theme from Spider-Man is "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility." Yes, we can apply this to saving the world from imploding into chaos at the hands of Kingpin. We can also apply this to the micro-decisions we make all day, every day. We can use our power of choice for good or for self-inflicted evil.
You may not like hearing this, but the simple reality is that everything that happens in our lives is, ultimately, our choice. Yes, shitty things happen. But we get to decide how we respond to those shitty things. Choice is our superpower.
Superpowers, it turns out, are curious things. It's not just about having them, we also need to believe in them. "It takes a leap of faith" says parallel universe Peter Parker to (super cool) newbie Spider-Man Miles Morales as he struggles to control his new awesomeness.
Obviously your superpowers will be applied a little differently. You will likely not, any time soon, swing your way from building to building through NYC. Regardless, we all have the capacity to do something pretty extraordinary if we take that same leap of faith.
Last week you wrote your list of superpowers in the form of I AM statements. So now it's time to leap. What are you going to do differently? What are you going to do the same? What needs to happen in your life, what choices do you need to make, to be that I AM person? Maybe you need to spend an hour a day doing cold-calls for your business? Maybe you need to go back to school; retrain? Maybe you need to get your butt out of bed earlier each day so you have time for exercise? Maybe you need to skip [insert your favorite method of time-wasting here] at night and get a little more sleep?
Make different choices. Become your very own Super-Human.