Monday, January 17, 2011

FAIL 2011

Christmas break was a bittersweet experience for me this year. I had the opportunity to go back to Utah for about 3 weeks and for the most part I got to spend a lot of quality time with my family and friends. That encompasses the sweet part.

The bitter part came in the 2 days before I came back to California when I received my grades from law school (that were substantially lower than I had hoped) and I had "the talk" with Natalie that ended our 14 month on-and-off relationship. I was able to stay pretty positive while I was in Utah amongst my family and friends, but soon after I returned home to California, everything began to settle in. During the week that followed I felt like my life was falling apart at the seams and I hit some serious lows concerning my self-worth and happiness as I began asking serious questions about myself, my potential, and where my life was going.

But I was soon lifted up as I remembered a principle that has guided my life over the past few years; I remembered that happiness is a choice. We as humans don't have a lot of control over the circumstances and events in our lives, but we do have exclusive control over how we react to those events and happenings. If we choose to look at events in our lives with a negative perspective, then a lot of bad things will happen to us during our life spans and we won't be happy. But if we choose to have an optimistic perspective then the exact opposite will occur.

So I realized that these seemingly terrible things that happened aren't all that bad, and in all likelihood are actually great blessings. There are a lot of life lessons to be learned from failing or from falling short of our goals and expectations. In fact, most things we learn in life are due to the moments in which we fall. Those are the moments in which we learn who we are and prove ourselves to God.

I have already learned a great deal about myself, and about life from the past two weeks and I know that there are many more great lessons to be learned as I move forward and progress in life. And at the moment, the lesson I have learned is that my happiness is my choice. This was reconfirmed to me this evening as I read a verse in the New Testament that quotes Paul as saying "...I have learned, in whatsoever state I am in, therewith to be content." - Philippians 4:11

I know that we will all have experiences and trials that will seem to be terrible and burdensome, but I also know that things happen for a reason and we don't have to let those moments get us down. Rather, we can choose to learn from those experiences and we can choose to be happy. Life is great, so let's all be happy.

Also, this makes me happy.


Special thanks to Steve West.

6 comments:

Katie said...

BZ! Just stumbled upon your blog, and what a perfect post to come upon! So true about life, huh? Although we can't always choose what happens in life, we can choose what to do/feel about it. Thanks for the deep thought, BZ. Deeper than conversations mingling around chips in the 90s! Anyway- hope all is well for you! I met your nice mom recently at a district training.

Madi said...

Love it BZ! This reminds me of my favorite quote from President Uchtdorf-"It is your reaction to adversity, not the adversity itself, that determines how your life’s story will develop."
It's amazing how much you learn through a new trial or experience.

Hope your everything is going great and that your loving the warm weather on your end of the country!

Sydnie said...

You are a spiritual pillar. I think I've told you that before. I still mean it

Great post. Love the passage.

Talk to you soon!

Riana Grace said...

Thanks Brett. That was just what I needed to hear. I've been reading a lot about faith and stumbled on a quote that I love, it said- Faith and doubt cannot exist in your mind at the same time, one will always work to cancel the other one out.

Having perfect faith that the Guy upstairs knows exactly what he is doing means trusting him 100% of the time. Pushing out our doubts is hard, but essential.

Good luck out there friend.

McKayJoice said...

The picture is killing me.

Meesh said...

Sometimes I think about blogging, in those events I usually stop by fellow bloggers sites while contemplating my verbage. I think I should blog first, since I generally feel like my blog will suck in comparison to yours, and decide to try again another day :) love the picture.