When Everything Is Not Okay

A week ago, I was sitting on my bed in Atlanta watching Hurricane Matthew make its way through St. Augustine.

We have a beach condo there, but the roads were closed. There was no getting to it. All I could do was watch the news. And watch.

The damage was devastating. Water moved through homes from the ocean side and out through garages. Houses near our condos were shifted on their foundations.

Then a news helicopter flew over our stretch of beach. There was our condo. Still standing.

I remember sitting on my bed and thinking, *Okay. Everything in my world is okay.*

About two hours later, the phone rang. My sister Beth was going to the hospital. The next morning, I was in California.

Yesterday, for the first time since I've been here, I got to hear her voice. There are still far more questions than answers. We don't know what comes next or what recovery will look like.

But yesterday, hearing her voice was enough.

It is amazing how quickly your definition of *everything is okay* can change. And it has me thinking a lot about happiness. Happiness is something I've spent years thinking about, talking about and, more recently, coaching other women around.

I believe we have much more choice in creating our lives than we sometimes realize. I believe knowing what matters to us matters. I believe our thoughts and perspectives matter. And I believe we can make choices that move us closer to a life that actually feels like ours.

I still believe every bit of that.

But here's the part I'm sitting with this week: Choosing happiness is not the same as getting to choose what happens.

I couldn't move a hurricane. I can't wake my sister up. I don't know what happens next. And no amount of planning, wishing or wanting changes any of those things.

But that doesn't mean I have no choices.

I can choose where I put my attention. I can notice the people showing up for our family. I can be here for Beth and her girls.

I can be grateful.

I can laugh when something is funny. And thankfully, things are still funny. I can let myself be scared without allowing fear to become the only thing in the room.

Maybe that's one of the harder parts of creating a happy life.

We spend so much time thinking happiness lives on the other side of getting what we want. When I get the job. When I meet the person. When I lose the weight. When I have enough money. When everyone I love is okay.

Then I'll be happy.

But if happiness requires everything around us to cooperate, we've handed an awful lot of power over to things we can't control.

The night Beth went into the hospital, I wrote on Facebook:

This week keeps reminding me there is a plan outside of my control that I cannot always see.

I can't see it today either. I would really, really like to. But perhaps there is another kind of choice available when we can't see what's next.

We can choose how we meet what is here.

That doesn't mean pretending it's wonderful. It doesn't mean finding some shiny silver lining. It means remembering that even when we don't get to choose the circumstances, we haven't lost every choice.

And maybe happiness has something to do with that.

If You’re Curious…

• How much of your happiness is currently attached to something going the way you want it to?

• What is outside your control right now, and what choices are still yours?

• What might change if you stopped waiting for everything to be okay before allowing yourself to experience something good?