“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Victor Frankl.
So how does this concept of space relate to our ability to change?
Have we all not experienced that moment, just before we are going to ‘explode’? The last straw. The moment when we believe we’ve been pushed too far, or subjected to a condition too long, or asked too many times for an expectation to be met – and BOOM 💥
In this moment, we still have choice. In this moment is precisely when we can step back, exercise choice, breath deeply and decide consciously to break our patterns of reaction and do something different.
Just do the opposite. Do the one thing you don’t want to do. Try a totally new approach. That’s where breakdowns are gifts, because they give us opportunities to have breakthroughs. Sadly most of us choose to breakdown over and over and over in the same way and in the same circuitous pattern! How absurd – right?
It has been my own personal experience, that as I’ve chosen to tune into those spaces of personal choice, that I’ve experienced the highest level of personal growth.
Yes of course it is hard! If it was easy more of us would choose to live in this blissful state. It is bliss! The freedom to understand our true inner power of choice. To exercise our personal freedom and instead of justifying our right to snap, to choose love again and again and again.
Love of self. The desire to be joyful over the desire to ‘let them have it’. The desire to live in the freedom, there are millions of ways to address an issue – and my reaction patterns have limited my creativity to just one way to respond.
They can send divorce papers, take our money, foreclose on our home, take advantage of us, cut us off in traffic, make us hold when we don’t want to, tell us no, make a demand, be unreasonable, be unfair, be unkind, steal our health, and even take our loved ones – for these are the realities of life.
What can never be taken is our own personal choice on how to react and thefore treat others as a result of what life presents.
For me, I’d rather be kind when I am disappointed, disperse my frustration in exercise rather than misdirect it at the clerk, the dog or my loved one. I would rather forgive quickly and let go, so I can return to peace quickly. These are my choices which have led to great joy, often in the face of tremendous loss and frustration.
Life is so beautiful and so are the people in it. Because I think this way, and look through the lens of beauty – can you guess what I see often?
When things get ugly, my thoughts shift to acceptance and searches for ways to detach from all negative thoughts and negative people.
When forced to look in the ugly box, I stretch to drop judgment and continue quickly through the work, then close the lid and get back to the business of beauty!
Who but the insane wants to dwell in the ugly box? Yet is that not where many of us live? So choose differently if you desire change. Tune into those thought patterns and ask if they serve your purpose.
“Everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
