Intentional Living Series Week Thirty-Four: Bad News

"What is to give light must endure burning." ~Viktor E. Frankl

Last week I discussed how follow-through is the key to success. This week I look at how to stay the course when the news is bad. 

After months, maybe even years of working to clarify your Lifetime Priorities, you hit your grove. You are doing a great job at work or relationships within your family are hitting a new high. You are making headway on your health through diet and exercise. And then it happens. Your job is cut. Your spouse announces he wants out. The biopsy comes back positive. Whatever it is, the news is big and earth shattering. Your head is spinning and getting up each morning takes all your energy. You can't believe that this is happening and just want to go back to bed and pull the covers over your head. 

Living an intentional life doesn't mean you can craft a life without strife and challenges. It doesn't mean you won't run aground at some point along your journey. What it does mean is that when the hard times come and they will, that you won't be rudderless. Your life will have support like a "boat skeleton" to keep you afloat while you get back on course. And you will get back on course. 

So what do you do when the news is bad? First, you grieve. Give yourself permission to be sad. I start by asking the people closest to me to give me a little time to process what has just happened and I do. Next, write this down, put it up on your refrigerator, computer, bathroom mirror and anywhere else you will see it. The good times don't last and neither do the bad times. Life ebbs and flows like the tide. You will come through this challenge so the objective, intention or purpose is to come though it with your values in tact. It is not about if life will "right" itself but when. And finally, look upon your hardship with gratitude. Gratitude in the good times is easy. I regularly lift up a prayer of thanks when life is going well but it is only as I have aged that I say a prayer of thanks when it gets hard. I will not wax poetic about the benefits of "the struggle" but I will say that I would not be who I am today if I hadn't had the experiences I have had in my life. I am grateful for my blessing in this life even when I have had to struggle.

You are not striving for perfection. Live your values in a way that brings you and those around you joy...even in the hard times. 

Get caught up on the entire Intentional Living series: