LIFE IS AN ADVENTURE ~ STAY JUICY!
Unhappy about past choices and experiences? Aren’t you lucky! Today and everyday you wake up is a chance to start over. Isn’t that amazing? You always get another chance.
Yep, every single day you get to make new decisions, choose new directions. If the old choices led down fruitless paths, you get to choose a new focus, a different attitude, a slight slant on what you thought you wanted before.
Sometimes when we get what we thought we wanted, the experience of having it disappoints us. There’s a good reason for this. We think things will make us happy. We try to fill our emptiness with people, places and things. We let life happen to us rather than taking the direction in our own hands. We are afraid to make decisions because then we will be responsible for the results of our choices. The great adventure of life is mystifying and terrifying at the same time. We can make the terrifying less intensive, even disappear if we understand how life really works. It’s easy if we remember a few things:
1. WE ARE ALL PART OF NATURE ~
Have you forgotten you are just as much a part of nature as a tree or an octopus? When things get tough, get outside in nature and breathe in the air. Okay, it’s hot out there but aside from the discomfort, pay attention to everything living. See and feel the green of the shrubbery outside and inside of you. Watch how effortlessly birds trust their ability to fly. Trust you have all the resources you need. Relax into pace with nature, feel your aliveness, breathe in nature and notice how your body relaxes.
2. NOTHING IS PERMANENT AND THAT’S GOOD ~
Nature is constantly blooming, peaking and dying, in a timeless cyclical process. If nothing died, we’d be living in a world we couldn’t navigate because of the sheer number of bugs we’d need to walk through. Everything must wax and wane, even us. None of the inhabitants of nature worry about what they have or growing older, only man. We spend lots of time doing everything but enjoying the great adventures which are our lives. Are you really going to waste your whole life worrying about dying when you can enjoy living instead? Let’s go!
Imagine you have been dropped on the planet to attend classes in Earth School. Every experience is simply a means of teaching you a life lesson. Sure, some of them are really tough and painful. Yet pain is necessary for growth. You can learn how to look at the pain and understand the lesson life by analyzing your experiences and picking out the threads of the story of your adventure. Once you learn that lesson, you never have to repeat it. Great news.
3. YOU CAN MASTER YOUR LIFE ~
The secret of how to feel in control of your emotions, your circumstances and your life is to realize the truth. Life is a wonderful adventure but you must have faith first to understand this. Life seems awful scary if you think you’re at the mercy of everything and everyone. You can always change this. If you take responsibility for your choices and make new ones that are in your best interest, everything changes.
Some times you’re stuck in a situation that’s not working for you. In order to feel better, it’s helpful for you to make a decision, take a stand, leave, go to counseling, stop the behavior, say you’re sorry or whatever’s needed to make a change. When you take a proactive action to make things better, they get better. It’s an unalienable law of the universe. Try making a small decision for your highest good and see what happens.
4. CHOOSE HAPPINESS ~
Happiness is inexorably linked to gratitude. You will be happy in direct proportion to your sense and expression of appreciation for all things. Everything essential is already yours. The fact that you have more than 95% of the other people on the planet makes you already blessed. You are lucky enough to be living somewhere that has indoor plumbing. You can go to an emergency room if needed because we have them here. You don’t have to walk all day across a blistering desert with a five gallon jug on your head to get water for the day, only to have to return again each tomorrow.
Wake up! You have all the things you need except for a realization that what you want can’t be bought. If you feel unloved, it is your lack of love for yourself that you feel. When you love yourself, others can’t help but loving you. Once you have accepted and started loving yourself, the burden of acceptance from everyone falls off you. You find out the truth. You get what you put in. The more you give the more you get.
5. THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE ~
And the truth is that the more we stop looking for the imperfections in ourselves and others and start being aware of ways we can help, our lives will get better. Getting outside of ourselves and into helping others frees us from self-absorption. Helping others lets us see how fortunate we are. Complete peace comes with the acceptance that all of life is a journey toward self-understanding. We can kick and scream along the way or we can rejoice.
Lorraine E. Castro, LMFT 
Lorraine…you are so insightful and it always seems if you are speaking to me directly and I am sure this is how so many of us feel! This is not only a hallmark of an effective therapist, but also a great writer and communicator. You have tapped into a true desire to experience life in a meaningful way without fear, We deserve it! I have spent a lot of time worrying about the bad things that could happen when my energy should be focused on the good things that can and will occur. You are right, we need CHOOSE hapiness! Thank you for sharing and reminding us that we don’t simply observe nature, we are part of it!
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Vicki, thank you for your kind comments and for understanding my intentions. I hope everyone learns to choose happiness over fear. Each of us deserves a life that is self-directed, based on love and respect for ourselves and everyone else.
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