Ever.

Yet, we act as if it does.

Why is it so hard to accept the neutrality of circumstances? Could it be because believing that would require that we take 100% responsibility for how we respond to the things that happen around us?

Think about it. If we accept the premise of circumstances being neutral, there is nobody left to blame. And that would be a buzz-kill. Circumstances are things that happen in the world that we don’t have direct control over. They are facts. Data points. That makes them an easy target for blame and encourages us to adopt a victim mentality. And, generally speaking, victim mentality excuses us from action. We curl up and suffer, all the while pretending to be at the mercy of said circumstances. We live at the effect of our lives instead of being at the cause of it.

Spoiler alert! All of the circumstances we encounter are neural until we assign meaning to them. We choose whether to interpret them as positive or negative. The goal is not to interpret everything positively. It does not serve us well to pretend to be happy about things that happen in the world that aren’t usually perceived as such. There is a time and a place for different emotions and we can typically expect to be managing negative emotions about half the time.

The goal is to be able to process things we have determined to be negative and not allow them to create negative results in the present. I know that’s kind of heavy. Once we are able to allow the discomfort of circumstances that we term negative, without trying to change it (because that doesn’t work), we stop fighting and resisting those things. We can allow those thoughts and feelings to wash over us, experience them, and move on. The benefit to not indulging in victim mentality is that we are taking action. Action in spite of the discomfort.

Accepting things as they are does not mean that we agree with them. Not by any stretch of the imagination. How we choose to think about things is fully within our control. I am not suggesting that we try and paint rainbows and daisies on a circumstance that is generally interpreted as negative. Accepting “what is” is simply a way of moving us away from trying to control the past and into a forward-thinking state. Once something has occurred, we decide how we want to think about it NOW. That is how you gain authority and power in your life. You get to decide if you want to interpret things and make choices that either serve your life or detract from your life…in the present moment. I want to encourage you to do this in a conscious way. Allowing our subconscious to make the choice will almost always yield a negative thought, feeling or behavior. Anger, hate, conflict, etc. will beget more anger, hate and conflict if we let it.