[Article republished from “Mondays with Mike – 1/22/18” email newsletter ==> Subscribe to get weekly newsletter in your inbox plus FREE REPORT]
It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. – Epictetus
Life is filled with joy and sadness, success and failure, good and bad times, hope and despair and good and bad health with few exceptions for every living being.
We can play the role of the victim or the victor…it’s all a matter of attitude.
In truth, we can’t change what has happened to us only how we deal with it. I don’t believe what happens to us is a matter luck or chance and in most cases we ourselves are masters of our own fate. We chart our own course often with the actions we take but also our inactions.
No matter what happens to us good or bad we have a cognitive choice as to how we react to the circumstances. We can act positively or negatively, optimistically or pessimistically, in a state of denial or indifference or we can accept it and move on.
However, it is natural for us to be depressed or feel sorry for ourselves when we are negatively impacted, for example by the loss of a loved one, a divorce, being fired from a job, or facing a serious illness; there is a grieving process and it takes time for healing and acceptance.
I have learned that adversity as bad as it may be also brings with it the opportunity for personal growth that only experience can bring and in the end can produce a positive outcome…if nothing more than how to face and deal with the next challenge that befalls us.
Often we fail to realize the example we set for those around us based on how we deal with a difficult situation, so just because I feel miserable doesn’t give me the right to make others feel bad.
Finally, happiness and unhappiness is not a thing but a belief so we are as happy as we chose to be. It’s not something we get from life but rather what we bring to life.
– Tim Adams
