Before this day ends, I guarantee life and it’s circumstances and the people who cross your path will give you the opportunity to learn something valuable about yourself.

A comment I often hear from a wide variety of people is, “If I just learn one thing from this person, seminar or life experience it will be worth while.”

Life is an interesting and fascinating series of events, processes and growth opportunities. It is what happens to us as we plan the outcomes of our life journey. Life is truly a classroom and class begins the day we are born and ends the day we pass from this world to the next. And keep in mind, there are no summer vacations, recesses, passing or failing grades and you never graduate. Plus, there is no final exam. You can however repeat a grade ( a lesson) again and again until you learn the necessary skills or attitudes that the teachers in this class (experience or situation) are trying to help you learn.

Each of us is traveling through our very unique lives toward a variety of circumstances, events, people, and outcomes and we are bringing these outcomes and people into our lives both unconsciously and consciously.

Some people are excellent students and learn life’s necessary lessons the first time they appear while many others are stuck in the same old patterns, life dramas and situations because they fail to bring the learning back to themselves.

You can’t quit school and you must complete each assignment before you get to move on to the next one. There are however a number of pop quizzes or wake-up calls. Some people refuse to see the learning as theirs. They continuously point their fingers outward toward the other people or events and blame, resent or feel a number of negative emotions such as guilt, jealousy, fear or anger about what life has given them.

Life is a neutral experience. It doesn’t care whether you are poor or wealthy, happy or unhappy, educated or ignorant, good looking or ugly, afraid or courageous, from Boston or Atlanta, are a Catholic or Jewish, single or married working or retired. It doesn’t have opinions. It doesn’t judge. It just is.

Your classroom is not about what comes into your life, but how you handle the assignments that matters. Success comes to many people. Some handle it well while others do not. Adversity, challenges and problems comes to all of us sooner or later. Some people give up while others use the struggle to get better, wiser or stronger. Everyone has problems whether in their career, relationships, businesses or with children, customers or spouses.

The opportunity for personal growth or learning, can be found in each of life’s experiences or teachers. The key to success, happiness and inner peace is to learn to bring all of the learning back to yourself and not to point your finger or blame others or life for the lessons that are brought to you. You and I don’t always get to choose the curriculum (lessons and assignments) in our lives or the lives of others, and we certainly don’t get to choose how and when other people should learn their lessons. Everyone is on their unique path through life into their own future.

One way to know if you have not yet learned one of life's particular lessons is to observe that which is still in your life. For example if, you are having a relationship problem there is most likely a relationship lesson that you have not yet learned .

If you struggle with a financial lesson, then you have not yet learned a lesson in connection with this issue.

The opening line in the all time best selling book by Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled states, “Life is difficult.” Scott goes on to explain that life is only difficult for people who expect life to be easy.

What lessons are you learning or resisting today?

Tim Connor
http://www.timconnor.com