The Best Possible Outcome

Whenever we are working on something, we are working toward ‘the best possible outcome’. What the best possible outcome actually is, depends on the project at hand — and very often on our definition of success. If our definition of success involves a monetary perspective, chances are that in our ‘best possible outcome’ money is involved. On the other hand, if our definition of success has more to do with following our heart’s desires, what we envision as the ‘best possible outcome’ may not have a monetary aspect at all.

From a spiritual, or even universal perspective the ‘best possible outcome’ more often than not has to do with our personal growth. With the lessons learned. With experiences we have as we move forward along our personal paths.

As such, the spiritual perspective on the ‘best possible outcome’ may be vastly different from what we have dreamed up in our own conscious, logical minds as the ‘best possible outcome’. After all, we really love to have happy endings...

But what if your personal path takes you into serious illness? From our human perspective that is about the worst that could happen to us. However, from a personal-growth perspective it may well be an experience that will allow us to move forward on our paths with leaps and bounds!

It seems that perhaps the biggest difference between our logical perspective and the personal-growth perspective are our emotions. As opposed to the spiritual world, our emotions allow us to learn our lessons in the earth plane. From the spiritual perspective we are cheered on with every step we take on our personal path of growth — whether that involves pain and suffering, or winning the multi-million dollar lottery.

That being said, the energy of this point in time does allow us more than ever before to adapt and change our ways mid-stream. And as soon as we figure out how to bring our logical perspective and the spiritual, personal-growth perspective on ‘the best possible outcome’ together — our rewards can be greater than we ever dreamed possible!

And this seems to include financial and health issues just as well as smaller, or more subtle, ‘best possible outcomes’.

It does require for us to be courageous enough to be willing to look at all the aspects of what is happening in our lives. The good, the bad, and the ugly. All without judging ourselves because of it.

Just observing what is at play, how we feel about it, what it has to tell us, and what we feel we are learning from it.

The ultimate outcome may still not be what we feel is a good or desired outcome, let alone what we perceive as the ‘best possible outcome’. Yet chances are it has permitted us to learn and experience invaluable lessons on our path of personal growth.

First published March 8, 2013

Unexpected Change of Circumstances

It is funny how the circumstances we may find ourselves in can either give us a jumpstart, or stop us in our tracks. We tend to look at a change in our circumstances as a negative. Something that is throwing off our routine; that takes away the structure in our lives — in other words, something that makes our lives harder than it needs to be, as it takes away the organization we have imposed on our lives. It stops the plans we have made in their tracks, and suddenly we need to adapt to a place — and energy— that we are not that familiar with. 

This seems quite obvious with the big events in life — like relationships (whether they start or end; they do change the circumstances), moving house (for whatever the reason), losing or finding a job… All of those things change our circumstances to such extend that we are forced to adapt.

While there are also much smaller things we can find on our path, that change our circumstances in such a way that they become ‘life altering events’. With the recent pandemic as another major circumstance that can affect our lives and cause us to change direction on our individual life paths, is our health. Or more precisely, our perception of our health and wellbeing.

Suddenly it seems like we have become much more aware of how fragile our health and wellbeing are — or can be. Where only a couple of years ago we may have thought that being healthy was our “normal” state of being, now it is almost like we have to take overate action to maintain that level of wellbeing that we are comfortable with.

Just living a healthy life — with healthy food, enough sleep, and plenty of exercise — no longer seems to get us the same results it always did…

It amounts to an unexpected change in circumstances that demands us to look at the way we live our lives differently.

On one hand we may find that the stress we have always experienced as a “normal” part of life can have a greater impact on our sense of wellbeing than it ever did before. But then again, this greater awareness of our (perceived) physical fragility may also allow for physical anomalies to come to the surface unexpectedly.

It can be as simple as twisting an ankle because we stepped on a loose tile on the sidewalk, or as complex as an illness we find ourselves dealing with out of the blue.

These type of unexpected circumstances ask for a drastic reduction of whatever stress we are experiencing in our lives. On top of that it becomes extremely important to prioritize — to determine what is most important to us as we are living our lives, rather than to continuously adapt to (what we perhaps are thinking) other people around us are expecting of us.

And when we take back our ability to make our ow decisions, walk our own path, and live our own lives in a way that makes us happy — we may well find that our sense of wellbeing grows, as well as the perception that we are stronger — healthier — than we think we are.