Our life is nothing but a string of choices, and every choice branches off into another choice, and into another choice and on and on and on until you eventually die.

Maybe that’s a little morbid.. but it’s the truth.

That being said, we can’t always control the things that happen to us.

Lets go through a hypothetical scenario.

Lets say it’s a Tuesday morning, 9am and you’re just waking up.

You walk into the kitchen, and you’re presented with your first decision:

In one outcome, you choose to drink milk.

In the other, you choose to drink coffee.

Lets say you drink the coffee. It wakes you up and makes you feel energized, happy, and ready to tackle the day.

Now, in the alternate reality where you attempt to drink the milk, you accidently spill it… and now your day has started out with a mess you have to clean up. Also, that was the last of the milk.

Now you’re tired and frustrated, and lack Calcium, AND feel sad because the day isn’t off to a very good start.

The question is.. did this happen BECAUSE you chose the milk?

Was the milk secretly evil? Has it been sitting in the fridge since you bought it, patiently waiting to ruin your morning, and potentially throw your life into a downward spiral of misery and despair?

Probably not.

First of all, milk isn’t sentient (as far as we know) and you could just as easily have spilled the coffee. Which would have burned more, while still being just as sticky.

But that’s beside the point.

The point is, those two outcomes would have probably led to completely different days.
In one version of the day, the version where you got to drink your delicious morning beverage and start things off right, probably would have set the vibe for the rest of the day, and it probably would have been a pretty good one.

In the other version, the version where you spill your delicious morning beverage and start the day off wrong, probably would have set the vibe for the rest of the day too, only this time it probably would have been a pretty mediocre or even a bad day.

So does this make us a slave to our choices, or the things that happen to us?

Well.. no, I don’t believe so.

See, in the scenario where you spilled the milk, the entire thing played out sort of like this.

1. You chose to drink milk
2. You did not choose to spill the milk
3. You did, however, choose how spilling the milk would affect your mood, and your mood, consequently, affected the quality of the rest of the day

You see what I’m getting at here?

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You having a bad day had a lot less to do with you spilling the milk and a lot more to do with how you chose to let spilling the milk affect you.

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It’s that whole “life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you choose to react to it” thing

Now, I’m using a very, very benign example here. Most of us aren’t going to cry over a little spilled milk… (this entire piece was written just for the sake of this joke. Embrace it. Okay, just kidding. Mostly…)

The truth is, much worse things can happen on any given day, at any given time.

And sometimes, the things that happen are crippling. We can’t help but let them affect how we feel; and, as a result, the choices we might make when it comes to the rest of the day, or even the next few days, sometimes a few weeks, sometimes a few months, even sometimes a few years.

And that’s okay, and totally natural.

Sometimes, most of the time, we can’t help but let bad things get to us and affect how we feel and how we think, and how we feel and how we think directly affects the things we do and how we do them, which directly affects our lives.

But sometimes, we let ourselves get trapped. Instead of looking for a way to turn the negative circumstance into a positive circumstance, we get caught in a negative feedback loop, and the negative circumstance winds up controlling us, and, as a result, our lives.

Now some of you might hear me say that and get upset.

Some of you may be experiencing or maybe have experienced circumstances you couldn’t possibly imagine being turned into something positive.

I don’t suffer from depression, or anxiety, or BPD.

I’ve thankfully never lost a loved one, suffered a severe injury, or grew up in a broken home.

I’m very blessed, and very happy, to be able to say that my life so far has been pretty damn good and I’m pretty damn fortunate to be able to say that.

But I’m still human. I still get sad, I still get angry, I still have things not go my way, and I still feel like I might not have as much control over my life as I might like.

And I also know, that at any given moment, on any given day, something could happen, good or bad, that would radically alter my life causing nothing to ever be the same ever again.

And even if that something is soul crushingly terrible.. I can say with the upmost confidence that I would be okay, and as a result I would learn, I would grow, and I would ultimately find a way to use the terrible thing to benefit myself or others.

Of course I would feel miserable, or lost, or broken, and I would embrace those feelings and let myself feel those things and experience that pain. I am human after all, and I think pretending things are just fine and dandy even when really they’re not is just as bad as letting the bad thing eat you in the first place.

But step by step, piece by piece, I’d pick myself up, move forward, and make myself a little bit stronger than I was the day before. And the day before that, and become a stronger person because of it.

And it’s not like I’m naturally like this, I’ve just taught myself to think this way.

And we all have the capability to do that.

And say you’re like me. Say your life has been pretty good so far and nothing exceptionally terrible has happened to you yet.

Make sure you remember that, and remind yourself of that fact often.

Because that really helps to put things into perspective.

Maybe you did spill the milk this morning, maybe that was a mild inconvenience, but that’s all it really was.

A mild inconvenience.

Don’t blow it out of proportion, don’t let the rest of your day suffer because of it, because I promise, it isn’t worth it.

And I think that can be said about most of the things we deal with that kind of suck on a day to day basis.

Because the truth is, it could always be worse, and you should be happy that it isn’t.

Just like how it can always get better, but whether it gets better or not is up to you and what you choose to do next.
Because life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you choose to let it affect you.

So make sure you choose wisely.