Your destiny is shaped according to the combination of conditions pre-determined at birth and other factors that you are able to change through your own efforts. ~ From: “The Essence of Buddha”. 
People say that we are born with our own destiny and even before being born our fate is sealed.
Be it Fate or Destiny both define what we will end up getting in our life. But is Fate and Destiny same?
We read religious books, we pray to God and we believe that he writes in his books what happens to us and we accept it no matter what. Whatever happens, we always say “that’s how God intended it to happen and it is for our best”. Since our birth we are forced to acknowledge the fact that we are all driven by fate that God planned for us and there is nothing we can do about it. Our birth stars, planets, and God, together form a strong force driving our lives and we as mere puppets simply go in direction which the strings pull us to go.
To summary, if we believe in fate then we believe in something in which man’s free will is missing. Many people including myself believe in the signs of universe and feel that the universe is speaking to us in its own way. We feel that universe throws signals in our path guiding us to the right or the wrong direction. But in reality universe is our deep rooted soul, it simply echoes our inner turmoil. Just ask yourself how far you are able to go in the path of your wishes. When you can answer this question then only you will be able to move forward.
Believe in Yourself to Conquer Fate
It is very easy to blame the others or our environment for our unhappiness or mistakes. That in my opinion is just a cowardly attitude which has to go away if you wish to shape your own fate. Everything is our own responsibility.
Those of us who can observe ourselves and other with an enquiring mind, who can evaluate habits, strengths and weaknesses and who strive to continually learn from the mistakes and change are the people whose fate can change.
Remember what Einstein said, “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. That’s the law of Karma of life too. There is no fierce God sitting in the clouds keeping track of everything you do so that it can zap you when you don’t expect. Karmic reactions in our life come from our own deeds and our memories of past actions.
Our decisions, our actions and our goals are all based on our past. For e.g. If a person goes for an interview for a job and he gives some wrong answers, he is rejected. Next time when he goes again, he does not make the same mistake and gets a job. Does that mean that fate wanted him to get the second job? No, he made his own fate and destiny by learning from his mistakes and being more prepared for the second interview.
Can there be free will with Fate?
Suppose you are traveling on a road, you reach a cross road and you are confused about which path to select. You scratch your head for a bit and decide to go left. Now once you decide which road you take, your fate is decided, that road will take you where it goes but it was your free decision to take that fate.
For me fate or destiny is same and both define a decided outcome of the decisions you take with your free will. It is possible that the road you took earlier was wrong and you realize after going half way and then turn back to take the correct one. It is all about reaching our goal with our own decisions. Once the decision is taken, we can define our fate, but our free will alone can affect the outcomes of actions in our life.
The common belief that nothing can be done about our fate as it is decided by God is untrue. No matter how bad things look, there is always something we can do about it, it’s just how best you deal with the situation with patience and smile. There will come a time when the bad stretch will be over and there will be sweetness around. But always remember, no person, no situation has done this to you, it is you and your own self who chose to get on this bitter path of hardship.
Among all of us is a small quite place which gives us the peace and strength to make things better. If we can learn to reach this place, we will be able to make better decisions and cope up with any difficult situation with a smile.
Destiny is all about a personal mission, an ambition, a desire and fire to do something.
