Always something you can do

Life is full of ups and downs. During the high moments it is easy to feel in control. The low moments feel as though control has been ripped away from us.

During those ebbs and flows, our control remains more consistent than we realize. This means that have to be able to maintain our perspective during those low moments to work through challenges and obstacles.

The other day we were facing a challenge at work. It felt as though we didn’t have any decent options. We went through our decision-making process and concluded that we didn’t have much that we could do.

Yet even in these situations, there is always something we can do. We started to shift our discussion around the best option and shifted towards what small elements we can control. That gave us a glimmer of a path forward. It gave us slight hope that we can improve the situation and work through the adversity.

In our society, we are often taught to cower to adversity. It isn’t explicitly stated, but it is intimated. The news shows us the horrible atrocities in the world. It makes everyone out to be criminals or victims.

If we take on this mindset it will start to become habit. We will start to think our happiness depends on who is the president or what the stock market does.

Seeing the current rise in prices for certain assets, such as the housing industry, we can see that things ebb and flow. When the housing market crashed in 2008, nobody could see far enough into the future to see such a meteoric rise. In those instances, plenty of people felt victimized. They felt the bank took advantage of them. They felt the predatory lending misled them into doing something that led to financial struggles.

Those who were hurt the most from the 2008 housing collapse, likely felt victimized. They often felt that they didn’t have many options left. But even in those times, they had options. They might not be great options, but they were options, nonetheless. Having options means we have some control.

Many people saw that control and used it to make decisions that would help them in the future. I have plenty of friends and family that were impacted by the economic problems of 2008. But over time, their circumstances changed. Many were able to improve greatly from their experience.

Even in one of the worst economies of my lifetime, people made the best of it and came out better. They saw that they still had options, they weren’t void of any control. Then, they looked to focus on what they could control, not on what they couldn’t control.

It seems in many ways, the lessons learned from 2008 are being utilized today to help navigate the volatility today. Even when things aren’t perfect, even when things aren’t the way we want, we still have options. Those options might be different than we had hoped.

But we still have some control. We still have some options. We still have the ability to move forward and make decisions that we feel is best for us.

To me that is the beauty of life. No matter what happens to us, we still have the ability to choose our response. We still have the ability to grab ahold of what little control we have in the situation and work to make things better in the future.

No matter where you find yourself, realize that there is always something that you can do. There is always something you can control and use to move you forward.