Nothing is as Planned

Your control of life is actually very limited.

Have you figured this out yet — that your plans are like a bad first-draft outline?

If you have not, then likely you are trying to double down and improve your planning skills.

Now I have no problem with the idea of learning from mistakes. This makes complete sense. My point, however, is that if you have trouble expecting the unexpected you will find yourself frequently thinking, and possibly saying, a lot of bad words out loud.

When life doesn’t go as planned, in other words, when life does its own thing and laughs at your plans, it’s time to accept this important truth. You are not in charge of very much. In fact you basically have control of one thing. Your attitude.

Example.

Life unfolds giving two different people the same problem, disappointment, and heartache. Both take the blow and feel the pain and disappointment in the short run. However, soon one has given up and the other has redoubled efforts to live with renewed purpose and contentment.

Both had a choice having nothing really to do with luck or good fortune, because both in my story were hit with an equal level of misery. Their choice was how they would respond to disappointment with one choosing to drown in it and the other choosing to use it as a stepping stone toward an even better life moving forward.

Expect and even plan for disappointments so you can manage them effectively. They are as much a part of life as are moments of achievement.

But this is only half the story.

One of the beautiful things about surprises is that a lot of what is unplanned turns out to be the best part of the day. Life not only throws punches it plants kisses as well.

Living life is more than executing a plan and overcoming a difficulty, it is discovering civilization where you least expect it. It is finding out that God is anything but silent, and, moreover, that he speaks and shows himself in a thousand different ways to the open and grateful mind.

Again, it all comes down to attitude being like a great channel selection tuner that helps us dial in and out off all the propagating wavelengths of spiritual energy forms,  invisible and yet real, around us all the time.

Consider that choosing faith or belief is the precursor to seeing most of the time; not the other way around.