“The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.” – Caroline Myss
It’s about that time of year – the time of year when the holidays roll around and you begin to reflect on the past 12 months. I don’t know about you, but 2013 was a year of ups and downs for me. I hear people say that “everything happens for a reason” all the time, and when I’ve been in a slump, I’ve scoffed at them for saying that. To me, they were just saying that because everything was going well in their lives, so they didn’t have anything to be upset about.
But one day, I realized that though I couldn’t control everything that life threw at me, I could control how I reacted to it. I had spent so much time being sad and bitter that I forgot there’s always a reason to be happy. Being alive is a reason to smile in itself — having the chance to live on this beautiful earth, to love people and to be loved back, to touch people’s lives, to make a difference, to experience all that is good in this life… well, that’s plenty of reason to be happy.
Yes, I’ve made mistakes this year. Yes, I’ve blamed myself for things that I couldn’t control. But do I regret any of it? No. I used to be someone who looked at life as a glass half empty, but that led me nowhere. When you look at life as an opportunity, each day feels like a gift. This isn’t to say that when you have a positive outlook on life, nothing bad happens to you, but it is to say that when bad things do happen, you know you’ll be okay. You’ll be okay because we are made to withstand the strongest of life’s storms, and we have the power to quiet the worried, sorrowful, and confused voices in our heads.
Sometimes, you just have to remind yourself that things always get better in time. Even when it feels like you have nothing left to give, you can always give a little more. Take the holidays to find peace with where you’ve been and to decide where you want the coming year to take you. There is always hope, and there is always a way to mend what is broken. When I felt like I was losing my way, I found my way back, and I know you can, too.