Chapter 9: Choosing One’s Attitude
An excerpt from You Have Chosen to Remember: A Journey of Self-Awareness, Peace of Mind and Joy by James Blanchard Cisneros.
Little by little, you hear people changing the way they talk. More and more, you hear people saying “everything happens for a reason.” I remember, not so long ago, when most people just believed that “shit happens.” They were basically saying that good or bad things happen and that’s the way it is – and you just have to deal with it. Now we are in a time when I hear a lot of people saying to one another “everything happens for a reason.” This means that good or bad stuff will happen but there is a higher purpose for why it happened and you should be patient and understanding. In the end, something good will come from the experience.
In order to encourage the people who are saying that everything happens for a reason to take it to the next level of evolution, I would like to offer the view that “everything happens for your own good.” This means that everything that is happening to you now can be used for your development and growth now. You don’t have to wait for the future to be grateful for what is happening to you now. If properly perceived, every moment, regardless of its physical manifestation, is a gift you have offered yourself.
My friend, I understand that you might look back at your life, and tell yourself that this cannot be so. If you believe this to be the case, I have no interest in changing your mind about how you wish to carry your past. I have no interest, not because I do not care, but because I have an absolute respect for how you choose to carry your past and view your reality. The only thing that I do ask is for you to consider the possibility. It is in considering this possibility that you allow yourself to expand and develop. The acceptance of the possibility is not as important to me as your sincere consideration of it.
You may not yet believe that everything happens for your own good, because you still believe that sometimes growth comes through pain and struggle. You hear about pain and struggle, and negative connotations immediately come to mind. Yet you believe that this is what works for you, that this is what helps you get to the “next level.” You may criticize yourself, believing that this is the best way to get yourself motivated and moving.
We can grow through pain or joy, that choice is ours to make. But only the insane would prefer to learn through pain, rather than through joy. Yet, even in insane behavior, there is hope. For the more time we spend in insanity, the less we want to remain there. As we would not want to remain in a pool for an extended period of time because it is not our natural environment, neither would we want to remain in insanity. Growth through pain and struggle is insane, yet it is only because of our choice to grow through pain and struggle that we can recognize and realize this insanity. It is because of this that even insane behavior is a great gift we offer ourselves.
Thus, my friend, grow through pain and struggle if you still wish to, but understand that in doing so, you are coming closer to the realization that this is not how you want to grow. It is because of this that your perceived pain and struggle are great gifts and happen for your own good.
When properly perceived, all moments are opportunities to remember the presence of love. When things seem to be going against us, they are occurring in order to allow us to see and experience our personal blocks to the awareness of love’s presence. The presence of love is available to us in every moment. Gratitude and joy are the only sane responses to the presence of love. If gratitude and joy are not our immediate responses to the moment, we are misperceiving reality. The unconscious misperception of reality produces confusion and stress. Any confusion and stress that we are experiencing are, in and of themselves, gifts because they make us aware of our personal blocks to the awareness of love. The moments when we experience stress and confusion can actually be used as opportunities to find and define our unconscious blocks. In finding and defining these blocks, we begin the undoing process. In the undoing process, we question why it is that we are choosing to act and or react in a manner that is causing us stress and confusion. Sooner or later, we acknowledge to ourselves that we do not want to act or react in a manner that causes us stress and confusion. By acknowledging behaviors we don’t want to experience, we come to understand and recognize that there is another way, a more sane and loving way to experience the moment. We can then begin acting and reacting in this more loving manner and subsequently experience more love and joy in our lives. We can then experience greater peace in our lives. There will be moments when we forget and react and act with confusion and stress, but these occasions will slowly diminish and become a smaller part of our days. As they become a smaller part of our days, they also become a smaller part of our lives. The moments when awareness of the presence of love is experienced increases, filling a larger part of our days. Gratitude and joy become natural responses to having such daily awarenesses. The same moments in which we previously experienced stress and confusion, we now experience the presence of love, and we can simply smile at our past misperceptions. Not only can we smile, but we can also experience gratitude for them. We will know that it was only because we got tired of what they offered that we ever questioned their existence in our lives. And again, we can look back into our past and this time see every misperception as the true gift that it was. Once more, we can smile and be thankful in acknowledging the perfection of each moment in our lives. In this, we can find great peace, for we can understand that in all future moments, we will also have the opportunity to acknowledge the presence of love and be thankful for its perfection.
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Believe it or not, everything does happen for our own good. Trust is the only thing you need to believe this.
When something goes wrong, it is common to wonder … why me ! Why did it happen to me ? Why not to him or her. Why not to the person next door. !! But all we need to do is to try to understand “why you”.
Let me recite a very popular short story we all would have learnt in our childhood.
The story of the Tiger and the injured boy.
“One day a boy called Ram went to jungle along with his friend Shyam to pick wood for the chimney. His mother said it is going to be cold and they need to bring more sticks for the chimney to keep the house nice and warm and to cook for all of them. But she also asked them not to go very far into the jungle and come back before it is dark.

Ram and Shyam started walking into the jungle . They were excited to see many birds, wild rabbits, deer and many more animals. The boys kept walking on and on deep into the jungle , playing and picking sticks, they didnt realize how far into the jungle they have arrived. Ram had picked too many sticks already. He wanted to pick a few more to please his Mum. While he was trying to pick a few more sticks, he fell over a large stone and hurt his knee . It started to bleed. Ram started crying in pain and started to moan about why “his” leg got injured. A little later the two friends started walking back to home. It was getting dark and cold. Ram and Shyam were a little scared . They could hear scary voices of wild animals. Oh my God .. hiding behind the bushes was a lion. Ram and Shyam were shaking to see a big lion in front of them. The hungry lion would eat 1 of the boys.
So who did the tiger eat ? Ram or Shyam.
The tiger ate Shyam because he would not eat an injured body.! ”
Moral of the story….
Everything Happens for our own good.
I truly believe in this saying. So when anything goes wrong in my life, I remind myself of these stories and that behind this could be something for my good. Most of the times I can realise how worse otherwise it could have been.
Certainly this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to achieve what we want. A failure because we didn’t work hard enough cannot be justified by saying “it happened for my good”.
If I get up late, miss my auto and get late to work , I cannot justify this by saying that “it happened for my good”.
Well in some cases it could be !!!!
So when things go wrong , beyond your control, when you couldn’t have done anything to avoid it, just believe that it really happened for your own good .
Written 29 Jun
Thank you Abubakar for the story and for being a part of our community. Peace. JBC
Gives peace of mind. Thanks
Thank you Shekhar for being a part of our community. Peace. JBC