Have you ever asked yourself, “Why me?”
I know I have plenty of times. Sometimes life and circumstances can have you feeling like up is down and down is down. Problems you would rather avoid can hit you out of the blue and really take your head out of the game.
I experience this, I’m sure you experience this, and I would imagine we all do — even the most successful of people. In fact, I watched the women’s Wimbledon finals this morning. Serena Williams was playing — I’m a Serena fan — but today she just wasn’t at her best.
She got beat pretty badly. I didn’t watch to see what she had to say about the match in her interview afterward, but as I watched her play, I wondered whether she has moments where she asks, “Why me?” like the rest of us.
I thought about all the millions of dollars she makes as a tennis player and business woman. I thought about the millions of adoring fans she has, all over the world, who scream, and cheer, and root her on. I thought about her nice home, her cars, and her seemingly close knit family — “seemingly” because I don’t know their lives.
I thought about all those things, and I wondered if she still has moments where she feels like nothing is going her way. It’s quit possible. There were even moments today where the ball just didn’t fall off the net her way, or she made a tiny mistake that cost her a game — and ultimately THE game.
For me to look at her life from the outside in, it could seem perfect from my point of view — like she has everything a person could ever want. For her to look at her own life from the inside out, it could seem to her like her life is in shambles and nothing ever goes her way. But I would argue that neither of us are correct.
No one’s life is perfect. Even if you aren’t happy with your current circumstances, there’s still plenty around you that you can and should be grateful for.
So as cliche’ as what I’m about to say may be, I’m going to say it any way.
Why not you?
A specific circumstance in your life may be frustrating or less than ideal, but look around you. There are probably hundreds of other circumstances that are just right.
You’ve probably worked really hard and made a lot of sacrifices in your life that have gotten you to where you are today. And where you are today is definitely not where you have been before. You’ve certainly come a long way.
Maybe you worked your ass off to put yourself through school. Maybe you sacrificed tremendously to build a family. Maybe you’ve given more than the average person would for other people. And maybe it feels like you’ve never had it easy in life.
But life is not easy; life is whatever we believe it to be.
I’ve had to learn that the hard way. I can definitely say that there are things that I’ve worked my ass off and made unimaginable sacrifices to improve. I’ve had to work hard to change the way I think, because I could easily get caught up in the “whoa is me” mentality too. There may be things in my life that are less than ideal, but I can look around and count hundreds of things that are.
I know that the faster you decide that life is what YOU make it, the better off you are. When you stop looking at life as though you’re being dealt a hand at a Black Jack table in Vegas, where the House will always win, you’ll be a lot less “Why me?” and a lot more “Wow! Me?”
So rather than focusing on a single circumstance that I’m unhappy with, I will — and I hope you will too — remember to acknowledge things that need to change but to do a better job of also acknowledging things that have changed.
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