How we react to everything that happens around us determines the quality of our life.

Here’s the bottom line about having a good life. You have to do the work. You must be willing to do the work. Nobody’s going to give you a magic pill to swallow to dissolve all your worries. You see, we all know that. But yet, if someone is waiting for that lottery ticket that’s gonna solve everything, and erase the distraction of fear and worry, etc., well, it’s just not going to show up. There’s no way around it: We have to make choices, we have to make decisions that will begin to evolve our life, and move things forward.

Let’s talk about a couple of distinctions here. Number One: We have to understand that there is a difference between the things that we can control and things that we can’t. There are certain things in our life that are fully within our control, and everything else is outside of our control. Simple. When you can make this distinction and understand it, embrace it, accept it, and live it – your life will change. Your life will change overnight – in a heartbeat, because all of a sudden you won’t feel helpless and life deals your blow. When you find yourself in a situation that’s almost unbearable, you will feel helpless, because you realize that there are always things that you can’t control.

When bad news strikes, we can still control who we choose to be, even in that moment. We control how we react, and what we bring to those around us. We all have a choice – with everything that happens in our world and our lives, we have a choice of to how we react to experiences and information. Basically it’s like being throw into the deep end. You can get pissed off, but once your in motion, you can’t stop.

So it is how we react determines the quality of our life. How we react to everything that happens around us determines the quality of our life.

If it’s your wedding day and it starts to rain, whose fault is it? Is it your spouse’s fault because he picked the date and the time and the venue? Is the caretaker’s fault or the people whose own the venue? It’s really nobody’s fault. It is what it is. If you come home from work and you’re excited because you had the best day ever – you got a raise and you got to help people. You walk in the door and you’re so excited to tell your spouse what happened but you didn’t realize that he or she was having a bad day. Before you could even say a word, they start blasting out on you. “Oh my God, did you know what happened with our kids…everything is fallen apart…everything is terrible.” And all of a sudden, you get an argument, but you were in such a good space just a few minutes before. So, what happened?

Well, what happened is that we allowed something outside of ourselves to control our experience.

We might wish somebody else or something else was in control of our experience, but it can never be that way. Nobody can ever control who we choose to be or how we choose to react. If we focus, at any given moment, on the things we can control, and we relinquish everything else, things have a way of working themselves out.

In this very moment, we are the sum-total of everything that happens to us our entire life. All the years, the schooling, the family, the education that we’ve had, the jobs, the family that we have, the boyfriends and girlfriends that have betrayed us, the financial burden we’ve been under – everything that’s happened to us up to this point in life has created who we are in this given moment. Our present moment isn’t really a present moment, it’s a reflection of the moment before.

This is very empowering because the only way to move beyond right now, and to change your life – to look into what we can do in this moment that will shape and impact the next moment – basically, our future.

So, if we accept that every choice we’ve made has created our life and current reincarnation – the way it looks right now (the way our house looks, the relationship with our spouse, our children, our parents, our neighbors, our co-workers, and on and on) and we take responsibility for who we chose to be – we take responsibility for all of our decisions around who we are and have chosen to be, then we can start right now with the clean slate. We can draw a line in the sand and we can leave behind any part of our life that’s not supportive and reflective of who we want to be. And with that, we can make a new decision about changing our life and moving forward toward our truth, our happiness, and our greatness.

Until next time – many blessings,

Seth David Chernoff