All About You FRIDAY – Our Greatest Weakness (Mornings with Bob)

I used to be an optimist. Born with the happy gene, it was never too difficult for me to see the sunny side of a situation. Life is handing you lemons? Let’s have a cool drink. That’s not a cloud. It’s just some temporary shade.
You get the picture.
I figured if I didn’t acknowledge the bad stuff, my life would be a free flowing path filled with rainbows and butterflies. Then I grew up and life started to happen. I couldn’t figure out why things were happening to me despite my best efforts and positive disposition.
“Why am I working so hard and not making any money?”
“Why is my son suffering from autism?”
“Why did that contract fall through?”
“Why did I have to lose my husband?”
“Why can’t I find love again?”
Those were some hard questions I asked in some of my darkest hours. Times when reality momentarily overtook my optimism. In many of those times, I vented my frustrations to Bob.
“Our greatest strength is our ability to ask ‘why?'”, he said, “and our greatest weakness is our need to.“
I used to hate hearing that because in those times I wanted answers. But he was right. Sometimes things are beyond our control. Sometimes you don’t get an answer to why. Sometimes things just are. And realizing that freed my heart from the fight.
I used to accuse him of being a pessimist. I would come up with a pie in the sky idea and he would come up with reasons why I should be cautious. The dreamer in me would be floating around and he would pull my feet back to earth.
“I’m not a pessimist,” he would say. “I’m a realist.”
“Do realists have hope?” I asked
“Realists have the best kind of hope because they see the whole picture. The good and the bad. Their hope is based on the truth.”
He was right again. I realized how my optimism caused me to burn a lot of energy, trying to bat away the bad that was just a part of life, searching for answers to “why?” that were not at my disposal.
“Ok,” I declared to him one day after much thought, “I would like the record to reflect that on this day I am now a realist with hope. Heavy on the hope.”
Our greatest strength is our ability to ask “why?” and our greatest weakness is our need to. Free your heart from the fight of now knowing when it isn’t yours to know. Be a realist with hope. Heavy on the hope.
It’s been a long week. Don’t forget to celebrate. Let’s go have some lemonade.
Until next time…

Kind Regards,
MoveWell Academy
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