Think to be, Strive to be

Once you have that sense of mission, you have the essence of your own proactivity.  you have the vision and the values which direct your life. You have the basic direction from which you set your long- and short-term goals.  You have the power of a written constitution based on correct principles, against which every decision concerning the most effective use of your time, your talents, and your energies can be effectively measured. 

- Stephen R. Covey

We have power to select our response

Have you ever in your life blaming other people or circumstance for what you have to counter ?.  I'll give you a very simple example, you are in bad mood, grumpy all day long and when asked why, you'll said "I cannot be happy today because my brother eat my favorite cake and left nothing for me.".  It's like blaming the stimulus (brother eat cake and left nothing) for your response (sadness).  Well, this phenomenon is normal in our life, everybody will react the same, grumpy all day long when something bad happen to them.  And there's even a believe that it's our nature to be sad or angry if something bad happen to us,  we'll felt like we are the victim of the situation and make pity of ourselves "look at me, I'm the most innocent creature on earth, but people keep hurting me, how pity I am." We make genetics, circumstances, conditions, or conditioning as a reason of what we give out in our life.