From falling off your bike as a kid, taking inventory of the pain and trying to determine if you cry or walk it off to being laid off from your job as an adult, life knocks us down quite often.

Most days, its not even that blunt. It could be something as simple as you dropped your cup and spilt coffee everywhere. How do you react and what do you do about it?

Chuck Swindoll put it this way, "Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it".

If you fell off your bike you could choose to quit and never ride again; or, you get back on, fight through the pain and ride again. If you lose your job you could feel sorry for yourself and fall into a pit of self-loathing; or, you dust off your resume and get online to search for open positions. Spilt coffee? Sure you might expend a few curse words, but what is complaining going to do? Grab a towel, clean it up, and make a fresh cup.

Each scenario could be a day, week, or more of pain and frustration if you allow it. Simply spilling a cup of coffee could leave you in a state of bitterness that could effect how you interact with people throughout the rest of the day.

Rarely do we get to determine our circumstances or control every moment of our lives. Understand this and build your mental toughness to deal and handle situations as they arise. You can choose to be upset or you can choose to leave that frustration in the past and move on. The choice is continually yours.

As the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, "It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters".

Or how I remember it from my dad, "It's not what happened, it's what'd you do about it."

#bepresent #BeIntentional #theintentionalfather