We Never REALLY Know What's Going to Happen!

I had good intentions of getting a lot of work done today, and I was all lined up to do so.

But things have a way of not behaving the way we've planned!

Instead of working, I ended up primarily dealing with a burst water pipe... a result of the unusually cold weather we've been having, and even our reasonable preventive measures turned out to be not enough.

It all served as a reminder that no matter how much we might like to plan and map out our worlds, we never really know what's going to happen. Then I look back across my life and have to admit that I've probably had to "pivot" more often than I have had things turn out my way.

In some ways, it's also an object lesson and not getting too attached to your plans. The universe has its own sense of humor, and whenever you get too tied up in insisting on a specific outcome you tend to get disrupted!

What was the past couple of decades, I have learned that it's best just to have some approximate idea of what you want to happen, and then be content if life turns out somewhere in the vicinity of that.

Of course, this might not sound very appealing to Life's dedicated go-getters, and I can appreciate that. Perhaps my own approach to being fairly relaxed about the outcome of situations is tied to the fact that I am more often disappointed than overwhelmed with joy by the outcome of the world.

Some might insist that makes me a terrible pessimist, but I like to think I'm a little bit more of a realist than anything. And I firmly believe in doing your very best regardless of whatever it is you're facing, while at the same time being prepared for the eventuality that you're very best may not be good enough. That last bit was something I was taught by my father who was very insistent that I always do my best but he prepared me for the fact that sometimes it's not enough.

In many ways, our life experience is what we make it.

As the old truism goes: "life isn't about what happens to you it's what you do about it."

And people can have very different approaches to how they interpret their life experience. In fact some of the most successful people I have met, interpret everything that happens to them good or bad as simply an experience. They don't spend a lot of time worrying about whether the experience was good or bad or positive or negative. There's something rather freeing and powerful about that!

For example, a broken water pipe could either be interpreted at something horrible because it once again has gotten in the way of trying to build a savings balance. On the other hand we could look at it and say that it's a blessing that we had a savings balance so that we can actually get it fixed. These days, a lot of people would not be able to fund a $500 or $1,000 repair.

And so, I try to stay relatively neutral and philosophical about it all. Nobody's really at fault here, and whatever this is it just has to be dealt with.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!

How about you? Are you generally able to just let experiences be experiences, without assigning them as good or bad? Do you tend to have a strong attachment to your goals being exactly the way you envisioned? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 2024.01.16 11:18 PST
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