You’re not really hungry. You didn’t really even want it. You don’t really need it. But you see a cookie, and you eat it. Why? Because it’s there and there’s really nothing else to do at the moment. Do you enjoy it? Maybe it tastes good for a moment, but then it knocks your blood sugar out of balance and the guilt sets in and you wonder why in the world you even did it.
Is your life controlled by random events? Are you at the mercy of haphazard circumstances? Only if you allow yourself to be. Your circumstances can control your life if you let them. They can be very compelling and they will be extremely destructive in the long run. Because random circumstances don’t know, and they certainly don’t care, about what you desire from life. When you depend on circumstance or fate to bring joy and fulfillment, you’ll be continually disappointed. As soon as you decide to do it yourself, though, the results improve dramatically.
Circumstance will run your life if you let it, but you won’t like what you get, not at all. So decide to take control. Decide to live on purpose. Live with a reason. Act with a plan. It’s fully within your ability to do so, and as you do your life will be transformed into the best you can possibly imagine for it.
Planning for the future is important, but most plans fail. What happens when the best-laid plans don’t work out? No one likes having to resort to “plan B”, but still, there is a positive lesson here. Over time, roadblocks that change our plans also give us needed insight and experience and that can lead to something better. Even when our plans fall through, we know there are better ways, better plans. In fact, there are multiple good ways for life to work out, and there is even one made specifically for us.
What is needed most is a shift in perspective. Plans that measure our self-worth in common ideas of value, provide periods of success followed by lasting dissatisfaction. But, when we take the time to truly consider plans, we have to admit that a plan based on immutable laws and eternal truths can provide a source of truths that can never fail or be taken away.
Each of us needs to bear our present afflictions with patience, being patient, and reaching out for a plan that can open the door to our forever. Our present plan may be one of our hardest trials, but because we want to understand a plan that has worth, and provides a lasting joy, it is worthy of our consideration. And we should realize that plan and timing for us will always be the best.
Each of us want to look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we have brought with us is the best that we have experienced, then we can look ahead and remember that a well constructed plan is always pointed toward a future with the best of rewards.