Compliment of Yan Seitek via Flickr

When everything falls to pieces, our first instinct is to crumble. Sometimes our most carefully laid plans simply fail to materialize – leaving us bewildered, shaken, and unsure of what to do next. Wallowing in what wasn’t is a recipe for remaining stagnant. In the disintegration of our dreams, the only way to advance is to focus on what we can control.

What can you do to proactively move forward, to forgive, to formulate a Plan B, to maintain an attitude of hopefulness, to generate activity in another area that will occupy your mind (and perhaps launch you in a completely new direction – your life’s calling birthed from personal pain)? The mettle of our character is tested when life throws us an unexpected curve. You know that something doesn’t feel right, but you possess too much inertia to change it. Circumstance may take care of that for you.

How do we choose to handle the situation? Is it with grace and gentility, summoning reserves of wisdom we didn’t know we possessed, or with a regression of spirit that fails to see the lesson? It may very well take the unexpected to encourage you to change course.

To see your potential, you need to climb out of your comfort zone – out of what was safe, predictable, and stable. Sometimes you need a shove. Whatever the means to our soul’s preferred route, doing what’s ultimately in our best interests can mean discarding our agenda. Traveling lock step through life may preclude serendipitous occurrence – and an opportunity to depart from rigid pathways.

If your carefully delineated plans all of a sudden no longer suit you, then a jarring set of circumstances may be in your future. Your reaction will determine your ultimate fate. Is this a personal catastrophe, or a Launchpad for a rocket ship? It’s a matter of perception, and it’s all in your mind’s eye.