I was visiting my in-laws one evening when I saw this post on my newsfeed. It was from my 18-year-old son. He said:

"I just walked past my parent's room and heard my 4 year old sister Sarah crying. My parents are gone so I thought she was in there waiting for Mom to get home. I tried to open the door but it was locked, so when I got into the room with a key and asked what was wrong, I saw that she had tied the ribbon of her dress to their bed. As I was struggling to untie it she said:

'I'na good tie-er. Wanna know why I tied myself to the bed? ... Because Bethany was being mean to me.'

"That was the only explanation she gave. I guess the moral of the story is don't be mean to your little siblings or they might lock themselves in a room and tie themselves to furniture with knots that they can't undo on their own."

Indeed, sometimes it’s not life’s disappointments or frustrations themselves that cause the biggest problems—it’s how we react to them. When we react instead of pausing to respond with a deliberate choice of thought, we can end up making things much more complicated than they need to be.

Life will disappoint us. Frustrations will happen. But our power to rise above them doesn’t come from changing the circumstances—it comes from how we choose to respond to them.

As explained in Hidden Treasures, Heaven’s Astonishing Help with Your Money Matters (free download), the bigger the problem, the greater the opportunity.

So, I echo my son’s moral and invite us all to apply it to the grown-up world:

If life is mean to YOU, don’t tie yourself up in knots that you can’t undo on your own.

Success isn’t measured by how many problems we avoid, but by how well we face and respond to the ones we have.

And if you’re already feeling “tied up,” give yourself some credit—you’re clearly good at tying knots! (Be kind to yourself.) Then, get some help. You don’t have to stay stuck forever.

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