There is always a choice

It is oh so easy to blame circumstances outside of ourselves for the way things turned out.  It is the boss’s fault that you didn’t get promoted.  It is the spouse’s fault that you are unhappy.  It is the cat’s fault that there is hair all over the house.  Well, you get the idea; it is always someone else’s fault.  While it’s true that we often don’t have control over what happens to us (after all cats will shed hair), it is in our control to decide how we act to what happens and to take steps to change things.  Tired of the hair all over the furniture?  You have several options which include getting rid of the cat all the way over to hiring a cleaning service to come in once a week to clean the house.  But regardless of what you choose to do about the cat, most of all it is important to realize that our attitude plays a huge role in what we realize we can do about our situation.

Sometimes bad stuff happens to us and there is nothing we can do about.  A car flies through a red light and hits our car.  We didn’t have any choice in what happened, but we do have a choice in how we respond to the situation.  We can stay a victim or we can take charge of ourselves and respond to the accident in a way to put it behind us as a lesson learned.  Perhaps the lesson learned in this case is to look both ways at every intersection.  

If you are so far into the pits as to not be able to take steps back and look at all of your options then ask a friend to help you.  There are choices in every situation.  Some choices can be hard to make, but the first step towards any solution is to realize that there are choices and that we are not powerless.