Insight - When things don't go the way you want - By Michelle Libby

Rolling with the punches. Taking what you can get. It’s all for the best. Something better will come along. We can’t all be winners.  

We’ve been told these things over and over again especially when something doesn’t go the way we hoped. Our children decided that they didn’t want to be swimmers, but instead wanted to play hockey. Our spouse decided that he wanted to buy a new car instead of going on that tropical vacation, oh and it’s snowing. We didn’t win the billion dollar Powerball jackpot.

We love to plan and think about how wonderful things would be if we won the big money or we were able to keep up with the Jones. We expected that our children would grow up to get amazing jobs that could help support us in our old age. Sometimes those things just don’t happen.  

So what do we do? Wallow? Sob? Sigh heavily?  

Naw. We need to adjust our course of action. Adjust our dream to work with the other people in our family or at work. Make hay while the sun shines.  

I didn’t win the Powerball, but I am fortunate to have a roof over my head, two children who, despite what I may want, have opinions and dreams of their own. My husband works hard and supports me. That’s winning in my book, and all I had to do was adjust what I thought was best for them to what actually is best for them.  

Just because I didn’t win this jackpot, doesn’t mean I’m going to stop playing. I’m still going to present opportunities to my family and suggest things I think might work for them. However, if they decide that it’s not what they want, I will live with it.  

My word choice for 2016, is “opportunities”. I started to use the word toward the end of 2015, but decided that it was working for me and for my family. Present opportunities, take opportunities and strive for opportunities professionally, personally, together. I encourage all of you to choose a word that you might like to live by this year. Write it out on a big sheet of paper and post it when the whole family can see it. Refer to it often and have an amazing year.