Step 5 LEAN INTO the curves

LIFE DOESN'T HAPPEN TO YOU, IT HAPPENS FOR YOU. EVERY DISAPPOINTMENT AND DERAILED PLAN IS REALLY JUST A SILENT INVITATION FOR LIVING DEEPER AND GROWING WISER. LIFE IS NOT LINEAR. BY LEANING IN TO ITS CURVES YOU DISCOVER ITS GOLD.

 

Life is full of curve balls. Some you can sense are coming around the next corner. Others hit you from nowhere. There's no time to duck and it can take hours, days, even months, to reset your bearings and make a new plan.

No doubt you've had your share of curve balls. I'm sure you've also learned that no matter how much you may plan ahead to prepare for every contingency or mitigate against every risk, sometimes, pardon my French, ‘shit just happens'.

When it does, it tests you. Will you fall to pieces, rail against the world and throw your own little pity party? Or will you pick yourself up and focus on making the best of your new reality? Or a bit of both?

I've learned that sometimes we have to give ourselves time — a few hours, or days, or weeks — to grieve the loss of the future we'd planned on living. The times I've lost unborn babies. The times my husband has come home to say we'll be moving state, or country, or hemisphere. The times my children have taken a different path from the one I'd imagined for them.

WHEN THE WORLD AS YOU KNEW IT GETS TIPPED OFF ITS AXIS, IT CAN TAKE TIME TO REGAIN YOUR FOOTING BEFORE MOVING FORWARD.

Yet just as the best cars will hug the curves of a winding road, so too you can learn ...

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