Resilience

“Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.” The stories we tell ourselves shape our world and our actions. The people who don’t like us, the people who obviously want to do us harm or damage us in some way.

But what if we’re wrong?

What if we wrote the story based on bad intel? We caught them on a bad day, they’re only doing their job, we’re not as great as we think. All are possible.

Most often, things happen; they don’t happen to us. This is a bitter pill for some people to swallow because they want to believe that everyone is out to get them. If only everyone weren’t such jerks, they’d be successful.

In actuality, I think most would be shocked to find that very few people think highly enough of you to go out of their way to hurt you.

I think sometimes we build up these external enemies to distract ourselves from the true enemy – the one that lies within. We end up our own worst enemy far more often than anyone else possibly could be. And what we often excuse as an inability to get things done is more often an unwillingness to push through the pain, suffering, uncomfortability, or whatever else may be standing in our way. Most often, it’s not another person or group of people.

It’s easy to excuse our inadequacies, our failures, our mistakes. I can spend extra money on that trinket; I’ve worked hard for it. I can have this whole pizza; I’ve worked hard for it. The truth is, all of these come with a price that has to be paid – this isn’t good or bad, merely a fact of life. What matters is if you’re willing to pay that price going forward. You don’t have to be perfect in life. It’s an unreal expectation, but it merely means you have to be able to accept the consequences of your actions.