People seem to battle with reality. They think life “should go” a certain way. They have expectations and ideals about how people should be, about how the world should be, about what is supposed to happen. Then when people, the world, situations, do not go as they expected they become angry, frustrated, disappointed, unhappy with their life. The stronger a person’s ideals are the more frustrated they become when their reality contradicts.

We must practice being open. We practice and accept and build our ability to be fluent with reality. We must practice accepting our reality as it is.

We must decide to believe that nothing has gone wrong. Things are exactly as they should be because this is how they are. And we trust God in all of it. We believe God loves us and He is for us and He is working all things out for our good.

When we think something has gone wrong then our brain will offer us proof of all the things that have gone wrong. But the opposite is true as well, if we begin to think that things are going well, working out, then our brain will look for proof of that.

Life is full of beauty and ashes, easy and hard, joy and sorrow. We must learn that it is all part of the human experience. Nothing has gone wrong. God did not make us to be happy all the time. He made us strong and resilient and capable with lots of emotions that enrich the human experience if we let them. I have learned I can be joy-filled and sad at the same time. As we trust God in all of it, He expands our capacity to deal with all of it.

We must be honest with ourselves. Honest about what we are experiencing without making it mean something has gone wrong. Honest about how we feel without beating ourselves up for how we feel.

We practice awareness of our ideals and how they conflict with reality, then we can practice believing new ideals that generate the feelings we want to feel about our life. We practice being open to receive whatever life offers and practice accepting it as good.

Awareness. Acknowledge. Accept. This is where I am. I made decisions that got me here (take responsibility). I’m going to practice self-compassion (recognize my humanness), accept God’s forgiveness (His goodness and grace for me no matter what. He accepts me as I am.) and turn and walk a new way (decide to choose my thoughts and actions from God’s wisdom).

When we accept our life as it is, with all its ups and downs, and joys and sorrows, we can begin to create the life we want. We create the life we want by beginning to believe new thoughts. We believe in what is possible. We practice telling ourselves a new story about our life, and about ourselves.

Think. Feel. Act. Result. We create our lives with the thoughts we think about our life because our thoughts become our reality. What we think generates feelings inside us, those feelings drive us to take action, and our actions give us our life.

You have so much power! The power to choose what you think. The power to generate for yourself the feeling you want. The power to create the life you want.

Keep seeking and believing and practicing and becoming and practicing and discovering!

It is an on-going process, and the effort is so worth it!