How do we react to situations that happen in our life

When something good happens, we are thankful and enjoy feeling good inside and move on to the next experience with joy. And when something unpleasant or unhappy happens, or if we experience things that we feel are completely unjust and cannot imagine how something like this could be happening, we ask ourselves why and who hates us and does not want us to be happy and enjoy life. 

I believe that we choose what we wish to experience – this may be done unconsciously or consciously.  I think I can safely say that most of us do this unconsciously with conditioning that we take on from our life as we grow.  What we take on as our conditioning in life, whether positive (I am very good at my studies and I will do well in everything) or negative (I am not good at my studies and I will fail in whatever I do) will ultimately determine what we experience and how we feel and react to our experiences.  We then feel that we are the victims of whatever life throws at us.

I have come to understand that this is not true – we are in charge of our life and how we react to any situation that comes to us.  Even if a situation is a difficult or unpleasant one, if we can be of the mindset that there is something for us to learn from the experience and if we can stay with it and understand and learn the lesson, we can then let go of the negative emotions of the experience and embrace the positive and be in control of what we experience.

The 10 / 90 Principle – there is only 10% of the situation that we are not in control of and we are in control of the remaining 90%. Two different ways to react to a situation: the other day I received some unpleasant news over the phone.  The unpleasant news was not in my control – that is the 10%.  My first reaction to it was shock and then anger at what had happened.  I really let my anger show (luckily only my husband was around!!) and let myself feel angry, hurt, frustrated and ended up in tears.  I could have carried on feeling all those negative feelings, but what I chose to do consciously, as I am now aware that I can change my reaction to any situation, was to stop the negative thought process in my head and consciously chose to see what I had to learn from the experience.  I changed my thought process to not blaming the person who caused the unpleasant incident, but to accept what happened, take the lesson that I needed to learn, send love and blessings to the person and then move on.  I immediately felt much better, though not completely free of all negative emotions and I could over a very short period of time release all the negativity and be at peace with the incident. This is the 90% that we are in control of.

In Love and Light