What’s the Gift in All of This?

We all have challenges…life is about ebb and flow. And it’s human nature to seek constant pleasure and try to always avoid pain. But it’s our refusal to just accept the ebb and flow, our refusal to accept when bad things happen that causes much of our suffering. Instead of thinking that everything bad or painful that happens to us is just “bad,” we should be asking “What gift is there in this for me?” We can always learn from our hardships if we choose to look at them as stepping stones instead of stumbling blocks. It’s all about perception…and we get to CHOOSE how to think about things…we PICK our own thoughts! So that’s the great news about all of this. We can choose to look at what we gain from adversity (wisdom, deeper levels of empathy, better personality or character traits, a new job or relationship that’s better than the one we had before, spiritual transformation, or changing the path we’ve been on to bring us to our DESTINY- what we were always MEANT TO DO and go where we were SUPPOSED TO BE!)…or we can “choose” to focus on the negative aspects and play the victim role, sitting on our pity pot feeling sorry for ourselves and letting it steal from our ability to be happy in the present and future. This isn’t what’s in our best interest, though. Sure- take a little time to grieve- you have to experience your feelings. After all, that’s part of being human. But then realize that it’s not how many times you falter, fail, get hurt, or otherwise that matters…it’s what you do when you GET BACK UP that counts! Life is 10% what hapens to us and 90% how we choose to look at it and react to it. In the movie “Maid in Manhatten,” the character Lionel says “What defines us is how well we rise after falling.” And that’s exactly my point. We must always remind ourselves that while it seems that the good times never last forever, neither can the bad because that’s how the ebb and flow of life works. It will always come to an end because the only constant in life is CHANGE. And as Oprah once said, “[…] when you hit rock bottom, that’s the best [opportunity] to spring forward.” Everything’s a gift, guys- don’t get thrown off if it just happens to come in ugly wrapping paper sometimes!!!