Every success story is a tale of constant adaptation, revision, and change. Richard Branson

I’m working on editing my novel. I found a book Beginnings, Middles & Ends at Value Village on Saturday. It seems almost like serendipity I go there perusing the books and voila something jumps out at me. Editing, I’ve been putting it off, because it seemed just moving commas around wasn’t getting me anywhere. This book has helped already.

Our lives may need tweaking, editing, or a complete makeover. Often they need care and attention and we need care and attention. Have we been last on our list? Or are we like they tell us on the plane, putting our air mask on first so we can help others. If we don’t take care of ourselves we have nothing to give at some point, we are depleted.

We don’t know where our growth will come from. We don’t know what the future holds. Could Nelson Mandela possibly have known what greatness was in store for him as he was thrown into prison as an angry young man? Was there any other way for him to become the statesman he became?

Do we learn more from adversity? Is adversity the best thing that happens to us we would never choose. We must rise up and become stronger. It is like a sharp pull on our chain, we have to rethink, regroup, and grow. We will never be the same after we go through adversity, we won’t look at things quite the same way. We may think having to take off our rose colored glasses is a bad thing but is it really?

Maybe we thought we couldn’t fail. Maybe we thought our spouse couldn’t leave, maybe we thought devastation could never come to us. Maybe we thought petty quarrels and situations others face wouldn’t happen to us because we handle things better than that. We wouldn’t have those petty misunderstandings in our relationship.

The secret to change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. Socrates

Well handle this, life says. Handle it we must. We might handle it well or badly but we must handle it because we can’t ignore it. If we can ignore it, eventually it will become big enough we can’t pretend we don’t see the giant bean stock of a problem that has become our life.

We might even pat ourselves on the back because we always deal with the little things. One day a “little” thing may become something we can’t believe. As the tsunami takes over, we are hanging on for dear life. It could be anything that starts this process. A diagnosis we can’t believe, we eat well, we exercise, and we think good thoughts. How could this happen to us? It could be a misunderstanding and unmet expectations that morph and grow into something seemingly insurmountable. The economy could tank, or just our job or business sector be affected. Maybe we are reaching a stage in our life we don’t feel ready for.

Whatever is before us we must handle, grow, and deal with. We don’t know what will become of our life, relationships, but things will be different. We may think we can just go back, but we can’t.

Even if the diagnosis we are waiting for is negative, we dodged the bullet; we are given a clean bill of health. We will never be the person we were before we worried about that diagnosis. Confronting what we thought might be the end of our life may spur us on to do the things we want to get done. We’ve contemplated the end, we’ve been given a gift, and we need to use it.

Wherever we are in our life, there is probably some tweaking and editing that can be done. Do we need more, less, or different? Have we been doing too much for others, or not enough? Is there a hole in our life we need to fill? Are changes happening we don’t want but must accept? It is what it is, it can’t be different. Will it make us better, or bitter?

We cannot become what we want to be by remaining what, we are. Max DePree
Whatever makes you uncomfortable is your biggest opportunity for growth. Bryant McGill

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, meaning, change, and love.

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