For comments, suggestions, & contributions write/email the Webmaster at [email protected], [email protected]

"Most people are about as happy as they make up their mind to be.”  So said Abraham Lincoln.  It is not what happens to us in life that determines our happiness so much as the way we react to what happens.  While one person sees disaster in one situation another sees opportunity.  One person may rejoices while another spends his lot swearing and cursing just about everybody for his misery, except himself.  These two contrasting reaction is a result of choices that was made.  That whatever happens, either we aggravate the situation and compound it with more problems when we react negatively to it, or or we act positively and use those trying moments to induce us to be more creative and imaginative in approaching the varied issues of life.  Either our choices can make us into a better person or bring out the worst in us.  The choice is always within our province.  It’s consequences will be largely our own doing. Somebody said, that "Happiness is not a reward, it is a consequence.  Suffering is not a punishment it is a result."

Things may not happen the way we want it to be, or things may go beyond our ability to control them,  but we are definitely very much in control of our thoughts, our actions and “re-actions,” our behavior and our conduct.  We decide for ourselves how we will respond to a given situation, either negatively or positively.  Either you see only the darkening clouds and the coming tempest or you’re seeing the rainbows after the storm. 

Og Mandino said “…where dry deserts ends, green grass grows”  and that “every adversities in life carries with it the seed of equivalent if not greater benefits.” These are "forward-looking" men and women. They are not hampered with the challenges that blocks the road to happiness and success in life. They crave for it. They even look for it. But the whimpers and the whiners would always begrudge high heavens for their miseries and bad "misfortunes." Not knowing that "misfortunes" doesn't happen abruptly but called for in the first place. It is a result of some actions and decisions and choices in the past. They were just catching up and haunting those who created them.

But even if bad things happened to us and we're convinced that we don't deserve them, then it should also be a time for us to be creative enough to hurdle those situations. We have heard too many "happy" stories of rags-to-riches men and women who made it well in life and we asked ourselves, "what separates them from the other mortals here on earth? what makes them so different from me?" Well, the answer to that is quite obvious, they are not that special as anybody is. They were just regular people. But what made them get ahead in life is this --- They are not whimpers and whiners. Perhaps, they must have decided in life, whether later on or earlier, that they will not be a victim of circumstances anymore, but chose to master their own destiny.

We have seen and heard stories about cancer-stricken and aids-plagued people that, instead of "choosing" to rot away in some corner of a hospital and sulk the remaining years of life, decided to spend it in more meaningful ways, like setting up foundations to help those with the same ailments. Thus, they derive whatever happiness and joy that that temporals of this world couldn't offer. They have mastered their situation, inspite of their disabilities. Recently, a man hit the headlines of all major newspaper for climbing the highest peak in the world. It would have been just another "ordinary" feat by those known adventurers, except that this man proved to the rest of the world that "he can do it" inspite of his disability... He was blind!

So remember that when adversities in life hits you... your not alone. You're not the only one who had it bad. Others have it even worse that what your going through, but still made it good. How did they do it? Simple, they all started making good choices and stopped feeling they're a "victim" of some bad fates that befalls them. So can you... You have the power to rise from it and be the strong person you ought to be and moved on in life and get as much happiness, satifisfaction, and joy that anybody else's deserves.

Thus a man’s true character is tested through life’s most difficult and adverse situations.  There in the fiery furnace of adversities you will know the character of a man (or a woman) by the choices he makes and the reactions he gives… 
 
 

We cannot choose how many years we will live,
but we can choose how much life those years will have.
We cannot control the beauty of our face,
but we can control the expression on it.
We cannot control life’s difficult moments,
but we can choose to make life less difficult.
We cannot control the negative atmosphere of the world,
but we can control the atmosphere of our minds.
Too often, we try to choose and control things we cannot.
Too seldom, we choose to control what we can
… our attitude!

(John C. Maxwell)

 

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws