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Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast today. I wanna talk today about those times when life doesn't turn out the way that you want it to. I can give you a lot of different examples from my life of times when life hasn't turned out the way that I wanted or expected it to. I think everybody can. That's just the way life is. It doesn't happen the way that we order a lot of the time. But one particular time that was especially difficult and impactful was a particular time many, many years ago when we were living somewhere where I thought I did not want to live. So I started doing everything that I could think of to change my situation, to change where we were living. And this involved looking for different jobs for me, looking for different jobs for my husband. We were both applying for different things. At one point my husband caught the attention of a particular organization who was really interested in him. And they decided to fly him out to where they were and do this long, expensive, lengthy interview process. He did really well. He was one of the top two candidates. And they were really encouraging to him. From the feedback that he got from the people who were interviewing him, it looked really likely that he was gonna get this job. The interviewers were actually so encouraging that they even set up an appointment with a realtor for my husband so he could go and look for houses in the area while he was there at the interview. So everything was pointing to the outcome that he would actually get this job, and I was really excited, started planning on it, started thinking about it. Hooray, I was gonna get out of this situation that I didn't like, this place that I didn't wanna live, and I was gonna be able to live somewhere where I thought that I did wanna live. But after the interview, he came home and we waited a couple days, heard nothing. After a couple weeks, we finally heard back and heard that they had gone with the other person. And I was really disappointed, really, really disappointed, not just because this particular solution to my problem hadn't worked out, but because I had been trying all kinds of different solutions for many years, and none of them had given the outcome that I had wanted.

There's a quote by Viktor Frankl from his book Man's Search for Meaning where he says, "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." it's a nice sentiment, right? Of course, this is what we are gonna have to do when life doesn't work out the way that we want it to, but it's a lot easier said than done. How do you actually go about changing yourself to adapt to a situation that you cannot change anymore? So what I wanted to share with you today was a couple of these tools that I have kind of worked out and developed for myself that helped me in this situation and many other situations where life didn't turn out the way that I want it to, in case some of these tools might be helpful for you too. So I've developed sort of a, a process that has kind of two parts that works for me. And the first part is to learn to accept and feel the feelings of disappointment that I'm having. As we've talked about before, learning to accept and feel your feelings, even your negative feelings, helps you to not magnify them. Helps them to be less overwhelming. Kind of like I've talked about before with the, the pain of natural childbirth when I was learning how to, how to practice for natural childbirth, one of the things they taught me was just to just accept the pain, breathe into the pain, don't struggle and push against it. So this is kind of the idea, same kind of idea with the disappointment. And so I've kind of developed a meditation for myself. It's a series of different ideas that I've written down that I read to myself in these first moments when I'm feeling disappointed and really overwhelmed with the feelings of disappointment. And I'm just gonna read this meditation to you kind of as an example of a meditation that you can come up with stating things that you believe, or you can actually use this meditation if you want to. Here it is.

This is not what you wanted. It's okay that it's hard. Life doesn't turn out the way you want it to. That's a fact. There are losses and disappointments. Sit with it and be okay with that feeling. It's okay to feel those feelings. It doesn't hurt you to feel those feelings. Don't be afraid of them. It makes sense that you would feel this way. It's okay to feel hard things. Be patient with these feelings. Sometimes they just need to be felt. Don't be afraid of any feelings. You can feel them all. You are big enough. Feeling is okay. Feel the questions this brings. It's okay things are as they are right now, and you don't have all the answers. It's okay you don't like everything in your life. It's okay you wish some things were different. It's okay you wish you had more control over your future. You can handle feeling these feelings. You don't want to be going through what you're going through right now, and that's okay. You can do this. You can feel these feelings.

So I've tried writing down this meditation and reading it to myself. I've tried actually recording meditations like this and listening to them. Both of these things help me. But that's the first thing is just accepting how I'm feeling.

The second is to think through a concept that we have talked about recently a few times, which is that my ability, all of our ability to imagine the future is based on the past, but that there's more to the future than the past. So we've talked recently about how our brains have this really cool ability to be able to imagine the future, but the way that our brains do this, the way that we are able to imagine the future, is based on the past. So for example, let's say you're trying to imagine your wedding. You will use memories of other weddings that you've been present at, memories of other weddings that you've heard about from other people, maybe scenes from movies that you've watched or TV shows that you've watched of weddings, different pictures of weddings from different magazines. Your brain will use all of these different elements and try and fit it within your context and construct a future, but it's all made of building blocks of these things that you have experienced or seen or heard of in your past. So it's a cool ability that our brains have to imagine something new, but it's not really totally new because it's really all based on things that we've already seen. And so as I said a couple weeks ago, it's really helpful for me to, to remember that my ability to imagine the future is only based on what I've seen before, but that the future is a lot more broad and ample than what I've actually experienced. And not only that, my ability to adapt to things is a lot bigger than what I realize. And this really struck me in a powerful way, for example, the first time that I was expecting a baby. With my, with my oldest son. I watched my body start to grow another human and give birth to another human, and prior to this, I had no idea that my body actually knew how to do that. But I discovered through this experience that my body has all kinds of latent abilities and capacities that only come forward when they're called for. So I have a tremendous ability to develop new capacities and abilities and also to adapt to new situations.

There are some species, however, that are really not good at adapting to new situations. A good example is an organism called the giant tube worm, which lives in the deep, deep sea by hydrothermal vents. and it needs a really specific set of conditions in order to survive. First of all, it needs complete darkness because it lives thousands of meters below the ocean surface. It needs high pressure from the deep ocean. It needs the chemicals that come out of the hydrothermal vents. And it needs a really specific temperature, which happens as a, as a result of the cold seawater way down in the deep ocean mixed with the superheated vent water coming out of these hydrothermal vents. And it also needs this symbiotic relationship that it has with specialized bacteria in that part of the ocean that can convert chemicals from the vents into food. So its entire biology is built around an environment that only exists in tiny patches of the of the deep ocean. It is an extremely unadaptable organism. Humans, on the other hand, are very adaptable. There are so many different situations and environments in which we can thrive, and different abilities that we have to adapt to these situations that are only called out once we're in these pressures and situations.
And so based on these concepts, as I've thought about these concepts more, I developed an additional meditation to help me with the next step of adjusting to circumstances that I did not want. So again, I'm gonna read this meditation to you as an example of a meditation that you can write for yourself based on things that you believe, or you can use this meditation. Here it is.

Let this be a new adventure, not something you already know how it will go. You can do new things, try new experiences. You can find new abilities and happiness in different places. There is more to your potential happiness than what you have been. Your past is one thing, your potential entirely another. You want to be happy, that's a given, but you forget that there's more than one way to be happy, and you have more potential skills than the ones you've already developed. You know one thing has made you happy in the past, but that's not the only thing that can make you happy. Be open to what the universe sends your way, even if it's not what you think you wanted. There are more possibilities than the ones you've seen. You don't need the situation you imagine in order to be happy. You can totally metamorphize. Your future happiness does not need to mirror the times you felt happy in the past. You are not a narrow, fragile being. There's not only one environment in which you can thrive. Allow yourself to be all that you have been and more. Don't be afraid of change. It brings forth latent abilities you had not known or seen in yourself. Embrace the new you that is coming with new skills and new abilities, new tastes, new memories, new desires. Let your potential manifest even when it takes paths you would rather shy away from.

I just find it really helps me to read or listen to these meditations to remind myself of these concepts that I know that I've learned and to help me to apply them to what I'm going through right now. Because when I'm really in the emotional heat of everything, I seem to need to hear myself saying these things calmly to help me to calm down and adjust to what I cannot change.

Well, those are just some ideas and concepts for you to help you to adjust to those moments in life that you really didn't want to see come your way, and you've done everything you can to change them, but they're just not changing. To learn how to do what Frankl says when we're not able to change a situation, to be able to change ourselves.

So that's what I have for you today. Thanks so much for listening, and have a good week.