Cynthia's Story

Written: Cynthia Sandoval

We all cast a vote for what we hope to see in our lives. We want a prosperous future. Good careers, success in our endeavors. We hope that what we are aiming towards will eventually provide us with an outcome worth working for. Then life hits you with a curve ball.

You get news you aren’t expecting. You are told one thing. The plans get cancelled. He admits he’s cheated on you, and has moved on with another. You child decides to go into another direction you hate to see them in, or worse a loved one gets sick.

Upon the many different circumstances we face as humans there is always an underlining hope. Without it, we are doomed, to our own gloom. Life requires faith. Life requires action on that faith. Doing something that moves the needle.

Sometimes all you can do in certain situations is simply pray that things will get better. Sometimes you get so far away in your own head, believing a lie that there is no light at the end of the dark tunnel.

But here is where you have to be consistent. When you have been going to the gym for months but the scale goes up. You’ve been working hard doing all you can do to pay off that debt that’s been weighing on the back of your mind, but all of a sudden, a letter tells you that all you have done was pay off it’s interest.

It feels like you can’t get ahead. You can’t move up, and your left wondering if this is what your life is all about. The struggle, and hussle.

Discouragement can be a good motivator, or a negative one. We can allow it to disrupt our attitudes, make us upset, stressed out, and call it quits. Or we can rise above what we face, and cast another vote to ourselves that says I am not going to allow this temporary feeling to make me give up on all I have worked for.

When we keep that perspective, especially in those very crucial moments where your being tested, you gain some grit. Momentum builds, and a new strength arises out you weren’t aware was there. You begin to see that from life giving you the opposite of what you hope for, explains alot about yourself. You may come to find how much you may truly want something or realize that it’s not as important.

Then there’s another side of this test. A testing of your consistency. When life gives you the opposite what do you do?

I do these 3 things.

1. Acknowledge: however it makes me feel. And live in that place, but not long to allow it to bring myself down.
2. Examine: what should I take from this?
3. Decide: to keep on going.

Heres the thing, we can’t stop, we just have to take pauses and allow some self reflection when life gives us the opposite of what we are asking for, and let it teach us what it wants us to know. Leave the rest, and move forward.

You may just come to a place where life was actually giving you what you asked for: IN ITS OWN WAY. Loving you, giving you what you NEED.

Please, keep going.