Everything happens for you
“Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don’t have to like it… it’s just easier if you do.” — Byron Katie
What a radical concept! Everything happening for us and things happening exactly as they are meant to.
If we were to set aside the arguments in opposition to these statements, what becomes possible?
That’s exactly what I did recently. I found myself judging a situation in my life and feeling annoyance at its presence. So, I decided to adopt the mantra, “this is happening FOR me.” I noticed an internal shift. Then I started wondering how to turn the event into an opportunity for learning. Right there, things opened up, and I found my agency to choose the best response.
What if we were to venture this response to the Covid-19 pandemic?
Can we say, “Covid-19 is happening for us, for humanity, for the earth”?
As Katie says, you don’t have to like it, but life becomes easier if you do.
However, sometimes, the unwanted event may have us hooked and no matter how much we change the words, we feel stuck in our feelings or in the story we are telling ourselves. Ways to get unstuck in this situation include:
- Play a “perspectives” game to help us see the situation through different lenses. After trying on different lenses, our inner wisdom gets to choose the perspective that helps us move forward. You can read more about the perspectives game and the freedom to choose a perspective here.
- Identify the emotions that lie underneath the response. What’s their message? What’s important about this? What are you not willing to accept? You can read more about managing challenging emotions here.
Life is not about what happens to us but how we relate to what happens.
To what challenging event, emotion, or circumstance in your life right now can you say, “How wonderful, this is happening for me!”