When you live long enough you begin to realize that pain, loss and disappointment are an integral part of life, sometimes even daily companions. Of course, joy, surprises and blessings are there as well, but often overshadowed by the other polarity.

It is certainly hard to be an optimist when the dark hours come and the challenges are bigger than you could ever imagine.

Perhaps the wind blows in your face and it blows hard.
Perhaps you have to endure an unending stream of losses, including your income, health, pets, family or friends.
Perhaps your patience and physical aptitude are stretched to the limit of what you thought was possible.

Yet…

The call is not necessarily about being an optimist, but about being okay. The latter means that you stay in your center.

There may be no glory in your experiences but also no despair. You accept whatever comes even if you do not welcome it in the first encounter. Whatever comes, however, belongs to your life. Resistance will make things more difficult to experience, while acceptance will help you to go through them.

What you need to realize is that there may be a thin line between being a pessimist and being okay. The difference lies in your focus and expectation. Pessimism focuses on the past and foresees (or is afraid of) bad things happening in the future. Pessimism adds more odds to prove it to be true.

Being okay focuses on living in the now, and the trust that things will ultimately work out to your advantage. Being okay gives you back the power of who you are.

It helps you to become transcendent, vivacious and still.

Sometimes a real victory is a quiet survival from day to day. Sometimes getting out of bed and making a few steps may be the hardest thing under the sun, similarly as working long hours at your job, day by day, or going through a break-up or a series of losses.

In such times there is no need to play an optimist, dancing and rejoicing how great your life is, but simply discovering what can be done, step by step, and attending to it. Even if the doing becomes taking care of the most basic needs.

You are not your problems, neither defined by them.
You are not your difficulties and neither defined by them.
You are also not your challenges, neither defined by them.
While they are there to challenge you, they are not you.
You are a God’s child, an individual consciousness, on the path to become Yourself.

When you focus on the middle path, being okay despite the circumstances, you acknowledge that the external reality doesn’t have a hold on you. You affirm that the circumstances do not control you. You may not be able to control the circumstances, but you set yourself free from them, coming back to your center.

It is an important distinction. You are strong and flexible. At your inner peace.

The incredible consequence of this approach is that you stop being a victim and begin to relax. When you relax and trust, you begin to open up for new possibilities and opportunities to come to your life. Oftentimes the possibilities are there, but it is the tension, the contraction and the ghost of the past that keep your vision limited.

When you relax, you stand up straight and simply look around.

With time, for sure, you will see.

Your biggest challenges draw what is best in you – your incredible ability to grow and love.

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