The key to living a satisfying life is how you respond to the life you're living.

You come back from the coffee station with a new stain on your shirt to find your coworker crying because she's just been laid off. So, you take her to lunch at Chili's to cheer her up and everyone has margaritas and when you get back to the office your e-mail account has been deactivated. Is that an echo of the Mexican Hat Dance you're hearing? No. It's the sound of the ax dropping and it's not what you had in mind when you left the house this morning. 

In the teaching of the Tao, the 10,000 Things is everything that happens in your life, good or bad. You win the Super Bowl pool. You get a speeding ticket. You have a ridiculous blind date. Your alarm clock goes off. The 10,000 Things is how the Tao shows itself to you, and losing your job is one of them. 

By itself the 10,000 Things is just a bunch of stuff that happens. How you interact with it is the key. Your responses to the details of your life have an effect on what happens next. Consider that speeding ticket. What happens if you give the cop static for pulling you over? What happens if you just accept it as the consequences of your actions? Very different potential outcomes. 

Your present situation combined with your response to it gives birth to new circumstances to which you must respond. From the moment you lose your job, everything that happens in your life, for the rest of your life, will be the spawn of unemployment. 

The key to living a satisfying life is how you respond to the life you're living. Not only does responding creatively improve how you experience your circumstances, it helps you change them for the better. With each choice you make you alter your landscape just a little. By responding creatively you take some control over the direction of your life. 

It's not complete control, of course. Life is risk and there is always uncertainty. It's like a rudder on a boat. It helps you deal effectively with a current you can't control. At some point you have to trust the current but this is much easier when you know how to handle the rudder. 

Interacting with the 10,000 Things is a skill you can develop. Over time you learn to recognize and respond to opportunity you could not see before. You can even learn to create opportunity out of circumstances where it may not be obvious. It takes time, but it's really just a matter of beginning, of making mistakes and persevering, and it begins where ever you are right now.

Just lost your job? 

Start there.

Ever forward.

Posted via email from Ever Forward