Control over the events of our lives...

This'll be short but I'll expand on it in future blogs. It's really just an answer to a question a friend posed in an email... I hope I get some feedback too...

Life is a series of events. Things happen. Then other things happen. Most of what happens seems outside our control. But is it?

When something occurs, we have a choice to interpret it in one of millions of possible ways. If we choose the interpretation that makes us happy, that connects us with others, that empowers us, that makes us feel like we have value and we belong, then our physical response to that event will reflect all those great feelings. We'll be a more generous, calm, loving human being. This will alter the course of our life. And the next event in the string of events will not be what it might have been. So, in a very real way, we have control over events that may otherwise seem arbitrary.