When Life Spins Out of Control . . .

Everyone experiences those times in their lives when things just seem to spin out of control. Everything seems to be going along great and then, wham, the washer goes wacky and spews out water all over the floor, your 10-year-old comes down with strep throat, your mother tells you her doctor is concerned about her blood counts and has ordered more tests, your best friend announces her husband has left her, your husband is concerned he'll be laid off from the job he's held for 12 years, and . . . you receive an NSF notice from your bank.

When things like happens, you want to crawl into bed, pull the covers up and sleep until everything is resolved. But you can't. So, what do you do? First off, it may be therapeutic to just sit down wherever you are and have a good cry! That behind you, you can start to deal with the issues that confront you. Let's take them one at a time ~ trying to handle all of them at once is just too overwhelming.

What are the issues you can do something about? You can clean up the mess in the laundry room and schedule a service appointment. You can give your sick little guy the prescribed medication, keep him comfortable and give him some extra TLC. You can call the bank and find out why your check bounced. Okay, now you're handling the things you can control.

But what to do about your mother, your friend and your husband? Is there really anything you can do about these situations other than offer an understanding ear, a compassionate touch, and a strong shoulder to cry on? Will anxiety and worry affect the outcome? Not at all! But you can fret and stew until you are half mad with fear and negative thinking if you choose. Of course, that path will only lead you to misery and exhaustion.

Do you have another option? Of course you do!

First of all, you have to recognize that life will always present you with situations you can't fix. They are perhaps the most bothersome and frustrating because there is nothing you can do to change them. Once you acknowledge that and accept it, you can begin to change the one thing you can change ~ the way you react to them. We each have a choice . . . we can let negatives overwhelm and defeat us or we can turn them into positives. Does that sound too simplistic? It isn't.

How you view you world is the number one factor that determines what you receive from it. If you spend your days looking for negatives, you'll undoubtedly find them. However, if you focus on your blessings instead, you'll find all kinds of wondrous things begin to happen. Learn to expect this; accept nothing less! Whatever thoughts you fill your mind with become your reality. If you think about happy, cheerful things ~ your world will be happy and cheerful. If, on the other hand, you focus on ugly, scary things, they will take over. It's up to you to create the kind of life you want.

Of course, we all realize there are disasters and tragedies that will always turn us upside down. Some losses are simply too great to be handled with just a positive outlook. These kinds of things take time to work through. We have to go through all the normal stages of grief until we can accept the loss and prepare to get on with our lives. Sometimes faith can help pull us through, or the support of friends and family; other times we may need professional counseling.

However, even in these situations, we have to believe things will eventually get better . . . the pain won't always be as acute, our world won't always seem as dark . . . that down the road we'll be able to feel joy and happiness again. Even amid the deepest grief, hard as it may be to do, we have to keep that spark of hope alive. Otherwise, we risk falling into an abyss so black and deep, the struggle to climb out may not seem worth it.

We each have an immense power inside ourselves ~ the power to control how we react to the things that happen to us and around us ~ it's imperative that we learn to use that power to create the life we want. This is the only way we can exercise control over our lives and live our dreams .

As Dr. Norman Vincent Peale said: "No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see the possibilities - always see them, for they're always there." Focus on those possibilities instead of the darkness and your life will always be bright.