Why Me . . . Why Now . . .

Why me . . . Why now?

Tim Connor

Why me . . . why now . . .  Why is it that people only tend to say this when things go bad?  Ever heard anyone say “why me or why now” when life was going great?  I haven’t. Have you?

Life happens.  No one can predict what lies around the next bend in the road but we can do now what we can to learn, grow and prepare ourselves for both opportunities and challenges in the future.  I would like to focus on both and not just the negatives when people say – why me. . . why now!

Let’s take a brief look at just a few of the areas that contribute to today’s challenges and opportunities and why they are showing up in your life now and how you react to them or can change how you react to them.

Your history –

Every choice and decision has a consequence.  Some are negative and some are positive, some happen short term while others can take months or years to manifest.  The history of your choices, decisions and actions could be a major factor in what is in your life now.  Maybe it took years for these to mature or maybe a simple action yesterday contributed to today’s circumstances but it doesn’t matter – you can’t escape the consequences of previous decisions and actions.  Their results will show up sooner or later- like it or not.  Think for a moment - how has your history contributed to what is going on in your life now?  What previous decisions or actions have had an impact on today’s events? Did you see them coming?  Did you make some poor choices in the past that have contributed to them? Did you adequately prepare yourself for what is showing up now?  Keep going ask yourself some other introspective questions.

Your attitudes –

There are a variety of attitudes you can have when it comes to adversity, problems or challenges.  You can choose to see yourself as a victim and not responsible for your circumstances.  You can see adversity as a necessary step for personal growth. You can feel you don’t deserve the opportunities that have crossed your path. Or you can stay stuck in the middle not sure how you feel or what you can or should do.  In the end your attitudes will tend to be a major driver in how you handle both negative and positive circumstances.

Your experience –

Experience can be a great teacher but it can also cause us to default back to previous responses to similar situations. The difference in your approach – to look at a circumstance with fresh eyes or clouded by events of the past will depend entirely on your ability to stay focused in the present, bring emotional maturity to the challenge and leave old emotional baggage in the past.  None of these will happen automatically and are not always easy given our human nature however if we want to learn from what is happening we must be willing to try and keep trying.  A victim mentality never contributes to effectively handling problems, failure or challenges.

Your mindsets -

In many of my articles and books I discuss the concept of mindsets.  Let me just say here that they are the primary motivator of all actions, choices, decisions and behavior.  If your life is not as you would like in any way or for any reason I would urge you to spend whatever time necessary examining your; mindsets and their origin, power and influence over your thoughts, attitudes and ultimate consequences.  A mindset is simply a consistent way of thinking about something whether positive or negative, good or bad or driven by love or fear.

Your expectations –

The number one cause of all disappointment is unrealized expectations.  An expectation is a desire, need, want, goal or a way of looking at a person or experience.  Fail to manage your expectations in a mature and realistic way and you will always set yourself up for frustration, stress, anxiety and disappointment.  The key to managing expectations is to simply let go of what you can’t control.  I know this is not an easy task but it is necessary if you want to eliminate disappointment from your life.

Your spiritual development –

I will admit that for the past two years I have been on an accelerated spiritual journey - reading, praying, thinking, meditating and just listening for God’s guidance.  Sometimes it comes and sometimes it doesn’t, well from my human perspective it doesn’t but that’s not to say that He isn’t trying to get my attention in some way, through some circumstance or some person.

We are human, we are stubborn and we all want to have a peaceful and happy life without drama, tribulations or troubles of some kind but that’s not real life.  Real life has its share of failure and disappointment and triumph and victory.  We all need to grasp that even in trouble there can be victory and that in victory there can always be trouble.

I have been fond of saying for years that, “God never gives you anything you can’t handle.”  Well I have been wrong, He always gives us stuff we can’t handle but he never gives us stuff He can’t handle.  The secret is letting go and trusting Him that all is working out in this life for His purpose.  Some of you may not be there yet.  Some of you may be far beyond my learning but regardless of where you are the fact remains that sooner or later we will need to learn to surrender.

“You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometimes fight it out or perish. And if that be so, why not now,

and where you stand?”

Robert Louis Stevenson