Get a handle on your life

Unexpected and unsettling events will occur in life. To ensure your personal happiness you need to be able to handle these events well. You can negotiate the rough bends; with a bit of practice and a growing positive attitude. Perhaps some of these can be useful guidelines to help you wade upstream through the difficult waters.

• Recognize that you can not control everything.

If you can accept this one basic yet fundamental premise you will find yourself well on the way to a stress free life. You must understand that you can make choices and decisions which may not have the outcomes that you hope for. This is not to say those choices or decision are wrong. Instead there are certain things that there is no way to ensure they turn out as we would like. Much as we can plan, order, design our life, we are sometimes dealt the blow that could potentially destroy our equanimity. So we learn that we can really not control everything.

• Life is not always fair.

This is one question that robs us of so much time and energy yet we continually ask; even though we don't get an answer. The question is ‘why me?’ When negative things happen to us we are so consumed by the questions we do not pursue the answers. The answer maybe too difficult to face so we run away from it. Or the answer may be just as simple as perhaps things were to meant to be. Certain things happen to us to build our character and test our faith.

• Making hard choices

As children we may have had a comfort blanket or reassuring dummy. We don't want to be without it. It may seem cute, a flapping piece of worn yarn trailing after a toddler; but it does not quite fit the image of an adult. When events happen to us that unsettles us or causes concern we naturally want to escape. Go back to our infantile time. We retreat rather than face the situation and acknowledge that indeed we do have make a choice;one which may be painful and unfortunately grown up.

• Your response determines the outcomes

So you now accept that there are things that you cannot control or change. Its is hard but you agree that life is not always fair. More difficult deal with is the fact that you may have to make hard choices. Not only do you have to grow up you also need to take responsibility. Here comes the good news. The response you make can determine the outcome of a situation. Good news? Yes definitely. By knowing you can choose your response, you know actually you can control your result. You, your response, your decisions, your action, not circumstances, people or events, just you. That should make you feel relieved. Now, the only thing you have to worry about is YOU.

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