Summary: Today’s quote comes from Kara Counard, our guest from <a href="http://makeyoursomedaytoday.com/KaraCounard">Episode 30</a>. (Kara’s story is a powerful example of making tough choices, and finding greater success! If you haven’t listened to the episode, check it out.) Kara suggests that we need to change our minds about ourselves. What is she talking about?<br> We have control over very few things in our lives. We can’t control the weather.<br> We can train our pets (sometimes) but we really don’t control them.<br> Our kids? Please.<br> We can control the vehicles we drive…unless you hit a patch of ice here in Wisconsin, in which case you are being controlled by momentum.<br> We might have control over where we work, but my guess is that everyone who is listening right now has to answer to someone else for some part of your job. Even if you are a self-employed entrepreneur, you still need to be responsive to your audience so that you give them the answer to their problems.<br> About the only thing we can control with absolute certainty is our reactions to stimuli around us. That’s it.<br> I’ll cover this in greater detail in an upcoming show, but I recently had a student ask me why I don’t get upset when things go wrong. Sometimes a student will make a mistake. Or our assigned meeting room at the clinical site will be arbitrarily changed. Or weather forces a cancelation of class—after I’ve already driving 40 miles through a snow storm.<br> I don’t get upset because a) that won’t change anything, and b) how I react is my choice. Why bother getting upset over a snowstorm? That won’t change anything except to make me angry, frustrated and disturbed. The snow will remain, unfazed by my emotional outburst. And I choose to not lose my temper over things that I cannot alter.<br> It, like so much else, is a choice. And we can choose to look at things in any way we want.<br> Let me give you an example:<br> Last April, very early in spring, the ground still snow-covered, I was driving home on an interstate highway, with a posted speed limit of 65mph / 105Kph. As I drove, with no other traffic around me, the left front ball joint of my wheel snapped. One minute, I was driving carefree and then suddenly BANG! I was sliding. I steered to the right to get off the highway, and in doing so, slid about 20 feet down an embankment and crashed through two stout fence posts before coming to a stop.<br> <a href="https://i1.wp.com/makeyoursomedaytoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/from-a-distance.jpg"></a><br> The offending wheel! <a href="https://i0.wp.com/makeyoursomedaytoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/close-up-resized-and-highlighted.jpg"></a><br> It was the most exciting 3-4 seconds of my life. It was 3-4 seconds that lasted about 18 lifetimes while it was happening.<br> When I came to a stop, my first reaction was laughter. I could not believe what happened and that I was completely unhurt. The car? Totaled. Then I called my auto insurance agent, and a local tow-truck service. I was dialing the local Sherriff’s line when I saw one of the deputies carefully walk down the embankment.<br> I got out, and we talked. He determined based on skid marks on the highway that I was not driving recklessly, and he also did not smell alcohol on my breath. So we waited for the tow truck and then he drove me to a restaurant to call for my son to pick me up.<br> That was scary. And I was sad, because I really liked that car, and I knew that the insurance company would declare it a total loss. But I was sooooo happy.<br> My wife wasn’t driving the car. Nor were my sons. That would have made me so worried. When it happened, there was no traffic around me. Suppose a car had been tailgating me? Or one had been driving in the lane to my right? If this had happened 5 seconds earlier or 10 seconds later (I later timed it), in both cases I would have not slid down an embankment,
