Notes from this Episode:

The Problem

• What happens when you create goals, but the obstacles seem insurmountable in achieving them and the circumstances of your life are completely out of your control?
• Most of us married with the goal of having a long, happy life with our spouse
  • Yet for some, the reality is they’re dealing with infidelity and addiction, and they think they’ll never have the goal of a happy life
• Some women are confronted with children with severe developmental or behavioral issues that didn’t fit into the idyllic picture of family life
• Maybe you are someone who has been unable to have children or your grown children have decided they don’t want to embrace the values and morals you tried so hard to instill in them
• What do you do when your goals aren’t realized in the way you planned?

The Solution

• You can still have a say in your happiness
• We can’t control other people’s actions or thoughts.  We can’t control their feelings.  We can’t control God’s Will for us, but we can control how we think and feel about all of it
• Challenge yourself to not give up on your goals when things become difficult or discouraging
• Every family I know who has embraced the trials and struggles are the families who breathe virtue and faith, joy and peace
• Whether or not we achieve our goals depends on three things:
  • We have to create the goals and keep them always in our mind
  • We need to be willing to tweak and be flexible with the “how” of the goal
  • We need to accept God’s Will for our lives
    • Sometimes our goal is not good for us or right for us
    • He knows what we need, and if we depend on Him, He will take care of us

Final Thoughts

• We can’t control life, and it may not look like the life we thought we would have, but we can control how we react to life.
  • What we think creates our feelings and actions
  • We can be angry, we can give up, we can get discouraged
  • Or we can decide to be happy with whatever comes our way
• We can choose to see an obstacle to our goal as a challenge we need to overcome
• We can stop comparing our life to others
• We can choose to be strong and confident and the boss of our day to day challenges, not the victim of them
• If we can’t achieve the goal the way we had hoped or expected, we can have faith that God knows best and rely on God’s will for complete happiness
  • This is how we achieve our goals and the ultimate goal, which is happiness and eternal life in heaven