Choose Your Own Adventure

Remember those "choose your own adventure" books?  The ones where you would read a few pages, be presented with 2 choices and then flip to the indicated page to see how things turned out?  I loved those books.  And I loved the fact that if you didn't like how things turned out, you could start over and make different choices.

Today I realized that attitudes are much like those books.  We have to choose, every minute of every day, what kind of attitude we are going to have.  Lousy things happen in life.  There is no denying that.  And no amount of positive thinking can change them.  But what you can change is how you deal with it.  Are you going to let your family disappoint you and ruin your day?  Or are you going to love and accept them for just who they are and move on?  Is the no-show client going to derail your week?  Or will you use the unexpected time to make a few calls to line up more business?  What will you choose?

Lately I have been frequenting a couple of blogs that are supporting a friend with cancer.  Yes, they are supporting her with love and prayers, but they are also supporting her cause.  At a time in her life when no one would blame her for taking to her bed in self pity, she is choosing to spend her time trying to make things better for other breast cancer survivors by helping to provide lymphadema sleeves for those who can't afford them.  Wow. 

Today a couple of things happened that made me sad.  And mad.  And then sad again.  But I thought about this person I don't even know who CHOSE to make the best of her situation, and about all of her friends who were in full support of her choice and I decided that I didn't need to feel sorry for myself.  I needed to pick myself up, and focus on the good things in my life.

There are so many things I am grateful for in my life - they far outweigh the bad things.  And I realize that I am blessed that that is the case.  So today, I choose to focus on the good!  And the great things about life is that just like in the choose your own adventure books, we can choose another attitude tomorrow if we don't like where the one we had today led us.  A cosmic do-over - available at any moment.