The next level after commitment to one’s self is commitment to one’s journey. Once your ink is pure (Level 1 post), the writing begins. This 2nd level is similarly inspired by Inky Johnson’s talk below, and is about accepting when your writing stroke is being controlled or influenced by another hand.
In a perfect world, a person will always have control of her stroke when writing the story of her life. But there is no perfect world. So contrary to the instinctual thought that leaving one’s mark primarily stems from never relinquishing control over what’s written on one’s journey, the x-factor in living one’s true journey is not attempting to erase marks that are meant to be inked. By every means accessible, resist certain hands from altering your stroke. But recognize that one hand can not be controlled and therefore, you are not alone. The story of your life has a co-author.
Inky Johnson (28:41) – “Do you have the ability to accept what you don’t understand?”
So Be It is defined as “let it be so, I accept it as it is.” As emphasized in 32 in 32: Losing Grips > Real Power & So Be It ?, adopting a So Be It lifestyle is crucial to live one’s true journey. Too many people’s own writing strokes are negatively altered due to stressing and dwelling about what their co-author is writing. And then when one’s final chapter is written, it is often foolishly interpreted that the co-author’s stroke led to the story going haywire. But in actuality, it was the person’s own stroke that went haywire due to their reaction over what their co-author was writing. The person perhaps resisted the unforeseen strokes instead of trusting the hand and letting the strokes be. Often in life, you just gotta’ roll with the strokes.
In Inky Johnson’s talk above (5:05), he explains how individuals’ lives were sparred on 9/11/2001 due to initially negative events. For example, because a man was stuck in traffic on his way to work, he was not in the World Trade Center when the plane hit. Another dude spilled coffee on his shirt, and therefore went home to change shirts instead of going back to work. And on, and on. The initially negative events that happened to these people led to the long-term positive result of their lives being saved. The message is that even when a sentence or even chapter in your story appears negative, believe in the long-term result and trust that the final chapter will wrap up everything appropriately.
Inky Johnson (7:34) – “When you think about when things happen, the first thing we try to do as individuals is how can I control it & how can I manage it? And if I can’t control it and manage it, now I’m frustrated and I’m mad about it. In the words of an older gentleman, he told me one day, he said, ‘Young man, you can’t speed up the river and you can’t slow it down; At a certain point you got to have some faith.’ How many times do we get re-directed and we don’t know what we’re being protected from, and we’re fussing and we’re mad about it?”
Accepting your co-author’s penmanship is the primary task in mastering Level Two. One must understand though that acceptance is only majority mental. It is critical to not just accept the penmanship with your heart and mind, but also with your actions. As previously emphasized in 32 in 32: Forever Peace, your deeds should align with your internal. A person’s penmanship must not simply be 2-dimensional and just words, or even 3-dimensional and just actions with no lasting power. The penmanship should have the backing of the co-author, so the ink is permanent. Because if your story just lasts a lifetime, what’s the significance of even writing ?
Inky Johnson explaining how he took his book Inky: An Amazing Story of Faith and Perseverance to Oprah (story starts at 32:02, quote at 36:08)- “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And I’m like, God, are we moving like that? Like God are we really moving to the point where I can get up in Atlanta, Georgia, look at my wife – don’t know nobody in Chicago, don’t know nobody on Oprah’s staff – and look at my wife and say, ‘I’m going to meet Oprah. I got a certain level of faith that I’m gonna’ meet Oprah.’ And God puts me face-2-face with Oprah and puts the book in her hands. I said, ‘God, let’s go!”