Life isn’t meant to be easy, its meant to be lived..sometimes happy, other times rough. But with every up and down you learn lessons that make you strong. Unknown

We get up every day yet we never know for sure, what the weather will be, whether we’ll have a problem arise or not or whether it’ll be a quiet and uneventful day.  Sometimes, because life isn’t perfect, we can feel angry and in turmoil.  Every day our relationships, family, money, job, etc. bring joy and also exhaustion.

So, how do we deal with the curve balls that come our way?  How do we manage those days (or weeks in my case this week!) where we feel frustrated, discouraged, defeated, anxious, angry and down?  I think it’s in the “how” we play the entire game, not just that one curve ball when we’re at bat (keeping up with my baseball theme!).

That this week I had my share of at bats and I mostly struck out.  I hit a home run or two but mostly it was an average outing.  And, at first I let it get to me.  Feeling frustrated even when I was driving my car or waiting for a pump at the gas station.  But last night I dreamt of a situation where I felt trapped by someone and just could not get away.  I woke up thinking how horrible that felt, and then I realized that the only person who can trap me is me.  That I choose how I deal with life, my strike outs and my home runs.  I decide if I want to let it result in the mind-chatter of defeat or if I want to look forward to the next game.

There’s no question that sometimes we wake up and from the word “go” it sucks.  Got that.  But, when that happens we can let it cause the rest of our day to suck (as I did one day this week) or just shake it off and move on — not letting the incessant negative chatter become our day.

And, hey — maybe my strikeouts are really setting me up for a home run.  Maybe the reason why things happen to us that crush us is so that we can get up and do better things.  Maybe if we didn’t have the practice of defeat, we wouldn’t know how to win. (Sounds easy, but I know it’s not!)

Look, I know Jack S*** about how life works.  But, all we can do is try.  Try to be kind at the grocery store when we’re feeling pissed about the lines or our last phone call. Try to be loving to our kids when we’re mad and they already feel defeated.   Or just try to love ourselves, when our bodies and minds are not following the course we want them to.

Seriously, it’s not perfect.  But, I’d rather have imperfection than nothing at all.

Have an amazing weekend!