Life has an interesting way of presenting us with a wide range of events. Sometimes, these events that occur would never even have happened in our wildest dreams, let alone be on our radar for commencing in reality. People can end up causing us immense amounts of stress and tension. People who were once close to us can end up betraying us. Events that we never expected to roll out end up happening. Support systems that we thought were unmoveable end up moving away.

The life plan that we wrote out years ago ends up going haywire.

There is no way to predict what is going to happen to us, nor is there a way to predict when things are going to happen. The intimidating truth is that we have no way to control what happens to us. This is incredibly frustrating and can often lead to very heaven emotions.

Although, what is super invigorating is that we can control how we react to the surprises that life gives us. We do have the power to work with the heavy emotions of a particularly surprising situation rather than working against those heavy emotions. It is healthy to feel all of the emotions that we have, yet we tend to want to suppress negative emotions and avoid facing them.

Emotional integrity is working with all emotions no matter how challenging they may be.

After feeling these emotions and accepting that they are normal, we make a choice about where to move with the results of the situation at hand. For the most part, we cannot choose what happens to us and we cannot choose what automatic reaction we have to certain situations. However, we CAN choose how to move on with our lives after the adverse event and the resulting reaction.

We can choose acceptance.

We can choose forgiveness.

We can choose knowledge.

These three outcomes do not come easily. Acceptance of reality, the forgiveness of both ourselves and others, and knowledge of self, society, and the world do not occur without us working to remain in a certain mindset first.

Most importantly, these major milestones only commence when we first choose to let go and move forward. Life doesn't stop moving — this notion is overwhelming. To cope with all that is present, it is imperative to always remember that you have the amazing opportunity to choose where it matters most.