The past few weeks I have been trying something a little different. I have been attending therapy where they use horses in the activities. I have to admit that it has been pretty fun and much more relaxing then regular therapy sessions. No sitting and talking for an hour but movement and activities to get me to use my brain. The past two weeks we have been talking about overcoming obstacles. When it comes to overcoming obstacles I learned a very important thing, I cannot always control the situation but I however can control my reaction.

When I say you can't always control the situation I mean that you may have in your mind envisioned things going one way, but then an unexpected event happens and changes things completely. You cannot control that, that event happened but you are in control of how you deal with the situation. One way that we worked on this was my coach made obstacle courses in the ring and I have one horse on the lead. I was leading that horse through the obstacle course while there was another horse walking free. I was expecting to be able to walk through the course with ease but I couldn't because there was an unexpected thing in my way, the other horse. I couldn't control that the horse wouldn't move out of my way but I was in control of how I dealt with it. I decided to remain calm.

Pretty much what I am trying to say is I know that I am not alone when it comes to wanting to believe that we can just magically control and fix any situation and outcome we want. I want to be realistic, we can't. There is no magic wand. There is no way of already knowing what will happen in the future. The only thing we know is how we can handle to deal with the situations and obstacles life throws at us. I want others to understand and learn what I learned. You are in control of you. You are in control of your mind, your body, and you are responsible for your actions. If something happens that isn't what you had planned, do not give up. Do not throw in the towel and lay down because it's not what you wanted. If something is hard for you to do never say you "can't" because when it comes to doing things ANYTHING is possible. A situation doesn't control who you are and how you manage things.

The moral of this story is that life is going to throw things you do not plan on happening at you. You have the choice and control of how you plan on coping with the situations. Like in the example with the horses, I could control the horse on the lead but I could not control the one walking free. I could have chosen to give up but I chose to find a different way. Every day you have the choice to decide how you deal with things. The choices are up to you.