Rising to the Occasion

Here's our Simple Abundance inspiration for the week! Can I get an Amen?! Enjoy...

To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.
-Harriet Beecher Stowe

In real life, serenity depends on coping and coping well. Rising to the occasion.

Consider the following scenarios. You have a flat tire on the way to an important business meeting. You find yourself locked out of the house. You discover that your husband's college roommate is coming for dinner in two hours. The pipes freeze. The puppy swallows an earring. Someone's sick or snowed in. You're asked to send money, switch car pool trips, show up for jury duty. One minute you're called our of town, the next you're asked to step in on a moments notice to save the school bazaar.

Real life is the collision - day in, day out - of the improbable with the impossible. Longfellow believed that situations that call forth our coping abilities are "celestial benedictions" in dark disguises, sent not to try our souls, but to enlarge them. Just as dough rises in a bowl, expanding before it becomes bread, we become larger than we ever thought possible when we rise to occasions, performing miracles with good humor and grace. Coping well enables you to see beyond the circumference of circumstance, so that the Real in the center of your daily round is not hidden by happenstance.

Most women are geniuses at rising to the occasion. But we've never realized how extraordinary this talent really is, because it's second nature by now. We've never given credit where credit it due, because we've never given coping much thought. But if women who cope well ran everything, Nirvana wouldn't only be the name of a grunge band.

We become more adept at rising to the occasion each time we see ourselves doing it. Every time we cope well with whatever real life throws our way, it's another deposit of confidence, creativity, and courage in our self-esteem account. So congratulate yourself each night for handling the unexpected with finesse. Well done.

Today, when you need to rise to the occasion, do it with style. Do it with a knowing smile. Confound them. Astound yourself. Make it look easy, and it will become so.