Who Knows What’s Good or Bad?

      

By Barbara Berger

Barbara Berger   Here are 3 situations. Are they good or bad? Let’s examine them.    Situation 1): A job at McDonald’s.    You’re unemployed and really broke. You get a job at McDonald’s and think it’s just great. You feel like a success.    You were the managing director of a big company and just got fired. A friend says oh well you can always get a job at McDonalds. To you a job at McDonald’s would be the ultimate humiliation and defeat.    Situation 2): Walking with crutches.    You have multiple sclerosis and are stuck in a wheelchair most of the time. Now with the help of your physical therapist, you are learning to hobble around on crutches. It’s a great success for you.    You’re a really active person and just broke your foot while you were out running. Now you have to hobble around on crutches for the next 2 months. This doesn’t feel very successful.    Situation 3): You get pregnant.    You’ve been trying to get pregnant for several years now and have been getting all kinds of fertility treatments. Now finally you’re pregnant. You’re overjoyed. Getting pregnant is the success you’ve been dreaming about.    You already have three kids and the last thing you need is another mouth to feed. Getting pregnant is not your idea of success.    So who knows what’s good or bad?    Are the situations above successes or failures? Do they make you happy or unhappy? The truth is the situations in and of themselves are just what they are. The determining factor in your experience is the way you react in each situation. And the way you react is always, and I mean always, based on the stories you are telling yourself about the meaning of these events. This meaning – that you give to events – is what determines if the situations make you happy or unhappy. In themselves, events have no significance, no meaning whatsoever. They are just things that happen in life. Our reaction to an external event, any external event, is always an internal event.    Which means that you are always the only judge of your own success or failure. And since you are the only thinker in your mind, you are also the only one in your life who has the power to make you feel happy or unhappy! If you haven’t noticed this before, I am here to tell you that it’s time to wake up and look at the stories you are telling yourself about what the external events in your life mean.    Which means that everything you think you are experiencing, which is caused by outside events, is really all about internal cause and effect. In other words, the determining factor is always the way you evaluate and judge whatever is going on in front of your nose. This is what determines your experience and in fact your whole life.     Things just happen When we start to see this, we realize that things just happen and then we judge them and react to them based on our stories about what we believe is good or bad and on our ideas of how reality should be in order to live up to our idea of what’s good. That’s the mechanism and if you are happy with your life, well that’s just fine. But if you’re not happy, you might want to ask yourself what your standards for happiness and success are and who is setting these standards for you? Did you really and truly set these standards for yourself or have you just accepted the belief systems of your family, friends, peers, school, workplace, culture and society? And if this is what you are doing, what kind of stories are you telling yourself about the way things ‘should’ be? Are you aware of your stories? Have you thought about the belief systems your stories are based on? If you want to improve the quality of your life, I promise you, this is something worth investigating and thinking about.    For more about this mechanism and the way the mind works, check out my books “Are You Happy Now? 10 Ways to Live a Happy Life” and/or “The Awakening Human Being – A Guide to the Power of Mind”. Both books are on Amazon and all other sites and are available as printed books, e-books, Kindle and audio books (read by me).    And one more thing: Just remember, everything is a success if you don’t have any expectations!    Happy Summer!   _____     To see all my many articles on MysticLivingToday, click here:  http://beamteam.com/en/barbara/barbara_berger_articles_mystic_living_today.html About Barbara Berger American-born Barbara Berger is the best-selling author of “The Road to Power – Fast Food for the Soul” (published in 30 languages), “Are You Happy Now? 10 Ways to Live a Happy Life” (published in 21 languages), “The Awakening Human Being – A Guide to the Power of Mind”, and "Find and Follow Your Inner Compass".  Barbara’s latest books include “Healthy Models for Relationships – the Basic Principles Behind Good Relationships” and her autobiography entitled “My Road to Power – Sex, Trauma & Higher Consciousness”.  Barbara lives in Copenhagen, Denmark and works as coach and therapist, helping people around the globe come into alignment with their own true power. For more about Barbara see her Web site: http://www.beamteam.com