Let’s pretend you’re cruising along through your life and things are going swell. And then something wacky happens out of the blue. Your boiler implodes. You fall and break your ankle (or your husband does). You get a big tax bill. You get a new boss. Your car breaks down.
That’s all bad stuff, right?
Well…
Maybe.
I mean, yes, it would make perfect sense if you triggered when any of these things happened. But here’s the thing:
Life is happening for you, not to you. (Click to Tweet!)
If you can entertain this simple principle—even better if you can accept it, but sometimes you have to start with simply trying it on—then there is no bad luck.
Which means, when sh*t gets real, you don’t even need to go into labeling it as bad, horrible or tragic. You can answer every worried thought, friend or family member with a simple “Maybe.”
The fact is, you just don’t know how it’s all going to shake out. But since life is happening for you, you can stay open to the idea that it all might work out way better than you ever could have dreamed.
How could it possibly not be bad to get a big tax bill, you ask?
Well, maybe it will:
- Inspire you to start that side project you’ve been dreaming about to earn the money back
- Convince you it’s time to start paying more attention to your daily finances
- Prevent you from sinking that money into something that would only turn in to a morass
- Give you the opportunity to heal an old idea that you are only capable of paying small amounts of money so you can inhabit a higher level of financial responsibility
Maybe it would be all four of those things. Any of which would be a great payoff on that money you had to spend.
Even if you aren’t quite ready to believe that life is working for you – and I get it, so many of us have experienced some really tough situations – I hope this post will inspire you to entertain – even if just for a millisecond – that maybe your next unfortunate turn of events might be something other than really crappy luck; that it might just be the start of something beautiful.
There’s so much more to say on this topic. If you’d like a beautiful and light-hearted way to learn more about the power of maybe, check out the fabulous kids’ book Zen Shorts. It contains a story about a farmer suffering a string of ‘bad luck’ that shares this same point. (Thank you to the dear old friend who sent it to me – you know who you are! The kids love it as much as I do.)
A couple other things to consider:
- Things will break when life knows you’re ready to deal with them.
- Life will present the perfect opportunities for you to learn what you need to know in order to be the person who can inhabit the visions you have for yourself.
