DOES ANYTHING HAPPEN FOR A REASON?
- Written by Eric North aka “The Happiness Warrior”
How many times in our lives does something bad happen and we tell ourselves or hear someone say, “everything happens for a reason”?
This phrase always sounds comforting, but it does little to help us recognize and understand the actual meaning that these events bring into our lives and how we use them to shape our future. In many ways it can sound like a cop out to help us hide from true feelings and marginalize the experience. Failure and loss are inevitable or may occur at any point in our lives but attempting to rationalize them as something that’s preordained makes us weaker, more confused, and often more likely cause it to happen again.
As The Happiness Warrior I feel that words have the power to change our own minds and help create a better vision for our lives. When we change our mindset to view things that happen to us with meaning we’re able to avoid the trap of thinking that everything happens by some sort of “plan”. This prevents us from experiencing the self-awareness and consciousness that creates personal growth. It’s easy to put the responsibility on a “higher power” that’s in charge of our lives when in fact it’s our own decision making and mindset that changes the course of our life’s path.
I always try to align my thinking and decision making with my Happiness Warrior Core Values which focus on self-awareness and personal accountability. We increase our feelings of self-mastery and confidence when we take personal responsibility and face adversity head on without fear of failure. Always, knowing that failure is subjective and what we learn can alter our future for the better.
When I make mistakes, I take accountability for my actions and do everything in my power not to do the same thing again. This helps to increase my sense of meaning and I can always find humor in making fun of myself and letting go of my ego. This helps to create the feelings of happiness that comes after overcoming a great difficulty and finding meaning from the experience.
Life gives us choices and how we determine the right answers are gained from the wisdom and meaning that we find in our past tragedies and painful memories. With this mindset we can also help others as they struggle and feel a greater sense of empathy and connection. Every time we do this, we raise our consciousness and personal vibration.
In the past couple of months, I’ve endured two very difficult and challenging events. My beloved pit bull Junior broke his leg and I had major surgery the previous week. These were very traumatic events for my family, but we pulled it together for all our sakes and with much patience, love, and hard work we’ve made ourselves happy again. I don’t believe that these things happened for a reason or as a fulfillment of some sort of “cosmic” plan. Instead, I always tell myself that “life happens” and focus on healing to move forward and care for my family. My focus and attention were now on my dogs and husband rather than my own needs which in turn helped me to grow stronger. Several weeks later, I can look back and see the acceleration that this has had on my own healing process and mindset.
We’re responsible for our own success and accomplishments in life and the responsibility is solely ours to create meaning from life’s biggest disappointments. By doing this, we know that we can create meaning from our circumstances rather than finding reasons to explain or deny them. We can own what we do with our circumstances and not let our tragedies define us.
I’ve always thought that blaming or believing that the sole purpose of all our heartaches, punishments, failures, and upsets on a cosmic being or some sort of predetermined lesson is more selfish than noble. I don’t believe that everything that we experience is deserved or some sort of punishment either. Mostly, it comes from circumstances that we’ve subconsciously created through our ego and lack of belief in ourselves. Our pain can be excruciating and feel unfair, but to justify it as some sort of script that we are preordained to live seems like a way to give up accountability and justification for our actions and choices.
It’s this sort of lazy thinking that makes us think that success is just some sort of lucky break rather than a combination of energy, determination, and personal intention. Anyone can be successful when we believe in themselves and understand that life will have setbacks that we will overcome and learn from. I always think of the guy who’s bragging about his god saving his home after a tornado while his neighbors’ homes are in pieces. I’m not assaulting his faith, but rather on why he thinks he’s special or more favored than anyone else? I prefer to think of any higher power as something that doesn’t give us special privileges but guides us in our choices and actions. The greater good is always served when we have this warrior-like mindset.
Ultimately, it means looking back with gratitude, not on the unfair events that have battered us throughout our lives. With gratitude we can look at these events as opportunities to define a path forward that we’d likely never have taken otherwise. It allows us to fully explore this great adventure called life.
When we fully express and explore our thoughts and feelings surrounding an event, we can turn adversity into an advantage. Hiding or feeling shame only sets ourselves on a downward spiral until we can stop and have honest conversations with ourselves. Consciously exploring our curiosity will help us better comprehend confusing and painful situations and help give the seemingly incomprehensible meaning and value.
These are steps and processes that we can all use to find create more resiliency and increase personal growth through adversity:
1. Greater appreciation of life. Learn to live in the present and appreciate what’s happening in our lives in the moment. When we take things more slowly and are truly conscious and mindful, we can meet adversity on our own terms. Living in the present creates a powerful “ready for anything” mindset.
2. Focus on strengthening close relationships. This is a lifelong process and finding our true friends and keeping them strong always makes hardships easier. We’re better and happier when we’re engaged with a strong support system of people we trust and care about.
3. Be mindful of the benefits of giving, creating greater empathy and compassion. When trouble comes to us this helps to connect and heal faster.
4. Be aware of a heightened sense of purpose and increase in self-esteem that comes from working through our problems. Often, we don’t realize how strong we are until we’re faced with hardship. Life isn’t easy and many endure terrible situations for great lengths of time compared to our own temporary events.
5. Greater self-awareness and spiritual development. Breathing, meditating and connection can help us find the upward path when we find ourselves in a downward spiral.
6. Focus on your innate gifts and powers and how to use them more capably in the future. We can all be superhuman if we believe in our abilities.
7. Creative growth is usually found throughout the process. Now’s the time to create new solutions and choices in life that can help us be happier and resolve our personal conflicts.
Navigating through life is never easy, but when we realize that we do have some control and that our lives are not preordained we can move forward with more confidence that we can be happy, find our purpose and start living the lives we’ve dreamed about.
