So life gave you a cactus. And you probably set that cactus down and sat right on it.
First, I would like to tell you that no one feels bad for you. No one cares that something bad happened to you, and no one cares that you're deciding to sit there and drown yourself in a puddle of your own tears. Unpopular opinion, right? The sooner you realize that you're the only person truly invested in your problems, the sooner you'll stop spending so much time worrying about the "bad" things that happened to you.
This brings me back to my original statement: Life gave you a cactus and you decided to sit on it. Sounds uncomfortable, right? A cactus up your butt definitely has the potential to ruin your day. The same could be said about harping on "bad" things in your life. What good can honestly come by focusing on the fact that Sheila from HR told Bob in Sales that you have smelly feet. You can't change what was said, you can't change that Bob believes you have smelly feet, and you can't change that Sheila has a big mouth. You can only choose how you react and how you feel. You probably don't have smelly feet and you know that. So why get upset over Bob believing what Sheila said about your feet?
By caring about what you cannot change, you are creating your own new set of problems. A problem is a situation or a thing that has the potential to be fixed. Things that happened in the past do not fall into this category. So why are we so willing to sit there and think of 20 different ways a situation could have gone last week? Because it's easier to look back than it is to keep moving forward.
I am urging you to keep moving forward and stop feeling sorry for yourself when something goes wrong. You are the only one who feels sorry for yourself and while you're wasting time looking for pity, you could be making huge strides in other ares of your life. Everyone has their own set of struggles and they may listen to you talk about yours, but at the end of the day they only are worried about their problems. Your "cactuses" are only your problem. No one is going to walk up to you and say, "Hey, could you move over a little so I can sit on your cactus too."
Move on from your struggles and do not let them control you. Do not let them define you. Do not use them as an excuse for poor behavior. Do not let your struggles hold you back. But please do use your struggles as an opportunity to keep moving forward.
Life can give you displeasing situations, but you don't have to care and you don't have to accept them. Let your cactuses be accents along you path of life, but don't stop and sit on them.
