LIFE DOESN'T HAPPEN TO YOU, IT HAPPENS FOR YOU. EVERY DISAPPOINTMENT AND DERAILED PLAN IS REALLY JUST A SILENT INVITATION FOR LIVING DEEPER AND GROWING WISER. LIFE IS NOT LINEAR. BY LEANING IN TO ITS CURVES YOU DISCOVER ITS GOLD.

Life is full of curve balls. Some you can sense are coming around the next corner. Others hit you from nowhere. There's no time to duck and it can take hours, days, even months, to reset your bearings and make a new plan.

No doubt you've had your share of curve balls. I'm sure you've also learned that no matter how much you may plan ahead to prepare for every contingency or mitigate against every risk, sometimes, pardon my French, ‘shit just happens'.

When it does, it tests you. Will you fall to pieces, rail against the world and throw your own little pity party? Or will you pick yourself up and focus on making the best of your new reality? Or a bit of both?

I've learned that sometimes we have to give ourselves time — a few hours, or days, or weeks — to grieve the loss of the future we'd planned on living. The times I've lost unborn babies. The times my husband has come home to say we'll be moving state, or country, or hemisphere. The times my children have taken a different path from the one I'd imagined for them.

WHEN THE WORLD AS YOU KNEW IT GETS TIPPED OFF ITS AXIS, IT CAN TAKE TIME TO REGAIN YOUR FOOTING BEFORE MOVING FORWARD.

Yet just as the best cars will hug the curves of a winding road, so too you can learn to handle the curve balls life throws your way (and if you haven't had any yet, they're coming!). You may not like them, you could outright loathe them and you will certainly not have prepared for them. But the only way to handle them is to accept them, embrace them and do your best to find the good in them (though this can take time). Because no matter how dire the circumstances may seem or how little control you have to change them, they will always — always — hold the seed of some benefit.

CONSIDER THE PERSON YOU WOULD BE TODAY IF EVERYTHING YOU HAD EVER WISHED OR PLANNED FOR HAD TURNED OUT JUST THE WAY YOU WANTED.

If your parents had given you everything you asked for.

If your first crush had declared their undying love and swept you off your feet never to leave your side again.

If you'd won lotto at 18 and never had to work another day of your life, much less those minimum-wage, part-time jobs that helped pay your way through school or your first trip overseas.

If you had never experienced disappointment or fallen short of the mark in any endeavour.

THE TRUTH IS THAT EVERY DISAPPOINTMENT AND DERAILMENT, EVERY SETBACK AND STRUGGLE, EVERY HARDSHIP AND HEARTACHE HAS HELD A VALUABLE LESSON FOR LIVING DEEPER AND GROWING WISER.

You may not have picked up all the lessons quickly. Perhaps, like me, there are still a few that you're working on (we can't be fast learners at everything!). But every one of those experiences you've had that you hadn't planned for, couldn't have anticipated and that may even have knocked you flat to the ground have brought you to where you are today.

So too, every experience that lies ahead offers no less valuable lessons for growing into the full quota of the man or woman you have it within you to be.

If you're up for the learning.

View your problems and ‘problem people' through the ‘it-shouldn't-be-this-way' lens and they can trigger enormous angst, stress, frustration, fear and bitterness. This is the lens that expects that life should conform to your plans, that bad things shouldn't happen (at least not to good people like yourself), that hard work should always pay off, and that people should do the right thing and see the world as you do.

Ahh, if only.

Viewing life through this lens sets you up for a life of struggle. Of feeling perpetually stressed, upset, pissed off or put out.

But there's another lens, and it's not Pollyanna's rose-coloured glasses.

The other lens views life as though everything that has ever happened, or will ever happen, is conspiring in your favour. Not immediately … not obviously … but ultimately.

This lens is forged in faith and optimism and an open mind.

It believes that everything works out in the end and that if things haven't worked out, it's not yet the end.

It knows that ‘shit happens', but that it's what you do after the fact that matters far more.

It knows that within every problem lies opportunity.

It knows that every difficult person (and let's face it, there are plenty of them) is a teacher in disguise — someone put in your path to challenge you to think a little bigger, act a little braver, be a little kinder or just become more patient than you may have otherwise been.

IT KNOWS THAT HEARTACHE IS A PART OF LIVING FULLY AND THAT NOT RISKING IT CUTS YOU OFF FROM LIFE'S RICHEST JOY.

It knows that sadness is a natural response to loss and should be embraced, not avoided.

It knows that while you're not always responsible for your experiences in life, you're always responsible for your experience of life.

And last, but not least, it knows that even when all hope seems futile, there is always a reason to hold onto it and that nothing, and no-one, is ever truly, fully, a lost cause. As I wrote in Brave after losing my younger brother Peter, no matter how much we cherish what we have lost, there is a gift that can be salvaged from what remains.

Of course, living life through this lens is not a one-off affair. Old habits die hard and if you've spent much of your life expecting life to be different from how it has been, expecting people to be different from what they have been and expecting yourself to be different from what you have been, then it will take your full commitment to see your life anew.

But it will be worth it. Because your happiness doesn't correlate with how much your reality conforms to your plans. It correlates with your readiness to accept what cannot be changed, to give your best to improving what can, and to finding that seed of goodness … however hard it may be at first to find.

WHILE OUR PLANS MAY FOLLOW A STRAIGHT PATH, LIFE DOESN'T. IT'S NOT LINEAR. YOU MAY NOT LOVE ITS TWISTS AND TURNS, BUT YOU'LL BE HAPPIER WHEN YOU LIGHTEN UP AND LEAN INTO WHATEVER'S COMING AROUND THE NEXT CORNER.

Investing time to reflect on the questions in the following chapters will help you do just that.

Quit wrestling reality

The great 18th-century Prussian field marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder once said that no plan ever survives its first encounter with the enemy. The same is true for life.

No matter how brilliant your plans, it's almost guaranteed that something will happen to keep you from executing them exactly as you've envisaged. That doesn't mean you should ditch them altogether. Far from it. It just means it's better to write them in pencil and rework them as often as needed.

This will be more often than you like.

Read the biography of anyone who's achieved anything truly remarkable and you'll discover that their plans went awry more times than they didn't. It's what they did next that set them apart from the pack.

What they didn't do was fall in a heap of self-pity, whine incessantly to anyone in earshot, blame bad advice or explain their failure as a permanent inadequacy on their part.

What they did do was confront their new reality, take full responsibility for what they did or failed to do that contributed to it, garner whatever insights they could and then reset their sails.

So too can you.

It begins by giving up your fight with reality, complete with finger pointing and complaining about what shoulda, woulda, coulda happened. This means giving up the idea that the universe — complete with all those who fly in your orbit — is supposed to fall straight into line with your plans and priorities.

NOT ONLY DO THINGS NEVER HAPPEN IN THE STRAIGHT LINE YOU PLANNED ON, BUT THE BEST OPPORTUNITIES OFTEN APPEAR AS A RESULT.

Of course, it's exceptionally easy to get caught up in focusing on all that's not right in your world — with what you can't do or don't have or what would have been better if only your plans had worked out. It's why so many people excel at it. Yet, as I've learned from a few periods in my life when my plans have derailed, dwelling on what's gone wrong never — ever — serves us. It only amplifies existing negativity, fuelling greater resentment, self-pity, blame, remorse or anxiety. All emotions that siphon energy, steal joy and burden relationships. All emotions that keep you from taking the very actions that could improve your future circumstances and find something positive in your current ones.

AFTER ALL, EVERY MOMENT YOU SPEND FOCUSING ON WHAT YOU CAN'T CHANGE IS A MOMENT YOU AREN'T IMPROVING WHAT YOU CAN.

On the flipside, when you accept your situation for what it is (even when it's far from how you'd like it to be) and consciously decide to focus on changing what's within your control, you'll improve your situation and expand your ability to influence what's outside it. For instance, you can reframe things in a positive way, intentionally use ‘can do' language, seek out new knowledge, sign up to a class to learn new skills, ask someone for help, get online and do some research, rework your plan and, most important of all, work on yourself (including answering the questions in this book!).

Letting go of your fight with reality isn't about being passive and throwing in the towel on your dreams or surrendering to defeat. Rather, it's not wasting time trying to steer the river, but resetting your sails so you can flow with the current, not against it.

Love what is

Bring to mind a problem you've been struggling to deal with and answer the following questions.

Give yourself permission to fail

Inventor and industrial designer James Dyson became famous for inventing the dual cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner. Less known is that, while developing his vacuum, he went through 5126 failed prototypes (yes, he counted), exhausting his savings in the process. Like Thomas Edison, who had more than 10 000 failed experiments before he discovered how to get the light bulb to glow, Dyson never interpreted his failed experiments as failures. Instead he saw them as yet one more way not to succeed. Today, his net worth runs in the billions.

The singular most important trait that distinguishes people who succeed after failure is this: they never let their failures define them.

Walt Disney started his own business from his home garage and his very first cartoon production went bankrupt. Henry Ford's first two automobile companies also went bankrupt. Stephen King's first book, Carrie, was rejected by over 30 publishers. Colonel Sanders of KFC fame had his famous fried chicken recipe rejected more than 1000 times before a restaurant accepted it. Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest leaders and US presidents in history, had several failed businesses and lost more elections than he ever won.

And remember Virgin Cola? No? Consider it as evidence that not all Sir Richard Branson's ventures turned to gold.

The lesson?

TO BE SUCCESSFUL, YOU MUST GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO FAIL. OFTEN.

Since it is only by risking failure, repeatedly, that you can truly learn what it takes to succeed.

Does that remove the sting of rejection or the disappointment of plans gone awry? Of course not. No-one relishes failure. Yet giving yourself permission to fail keeps you from personalising it: from interpreting it as some permanent and personal deficiency on your part; a sign that you should hang up your hat and never venture off your couch again.

THE REALITY IS THAT NOTHING WORTH DOING COMES WITH A MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE OF SUCCESS. IF IT DID, IT WOULD NOT BE WORTH DOING!

Every story of success holds a tale of bold daring and bouncing back from failure. Sometimes many of them.

Key to failing well is not to spend years dragging it out by repeating the same pattern of failure again and again and again. While Dyson may have failed more than 5000 times to perfect his vacuum cleaner, with each prototype he created he mixed up what he was doing. By figuring out what didn't work, he was able to figure out what would. Same for Edison. If he'd never given himself permission to fail, we may still be living by candlelight.

If you've ever held onto an ill-fitting jacket or pair of jeans because of how much you paid for them, you'll know that admitting you made a poor investment can be painful. It's why admitting failure can take every bit as much courage as pressing on. Just be mindful that doing more of what's already not working in the hope that it eventually will isn't brave, it's foolish.

EVERY DAY YOU CONTINUE INVESTING IN SOMETHING THAT ISN'T MOVING YOU TOWARDS THE OUTCOME YOU WANT IS A DAY YOU AREN'T SPENDING DOING SOMETHING THAT COULD.

But what if you reframed failure as a successful experiment? How might that free you to fail more often, but to fail faster, with less drama and a faster ‘bounce back' time? Treating everything you do as an experiment — giving yourself permission to fail — helps you recognise when it's time to cut your losses, to learn the lessons failure holds and, to quote Henry Ford, ‘to move on more intelligently'.

Research in positive psychology shows that much of our success in life is determined by how we explain failure (what the father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, calls our ‘explanatory style'). View failure as evidence of your personal inadequacy and you won't risk it nearly often enough (if ever). View it as part and parcel of what it takes to succeed — lessons to be learned, skills to be grown, experience to be gained, resilience to be built — and you'll go further than you ever could otherwise.

As you're considering your options, particularly for a project or business idea, consider the smallest possible risk you can take to test your idea — your ‘minimum viable product' to take for a test run and tweak before you invest more heavily in it. Testing a limited set of variables as an experiment can spare you the pain of a more drawn-out failure.

Just remember that failure is an event, not a person. You tried something and didn't get the result you wanted. So what? Don't make it mean any more than that. You are not your failures. So don't be defined by them.

WHEN ANALYSING YOUR FAILURE, DON'T MEASURE YOUR SUCCESS AGAINST THE PLANS YOU HAD WHEN YOU STARTED OUT. MEASURE IT AGAINST THE LESSONS YOU LEARNED WHEN THEY FELL APART.

However big your failure, it serves no-one to spend the rest of your life living in the shadow of a past mistake. Far better is to fail forward: to pick yourself up, extract the greatest possible learning and value you can from the experience and get back on your horse.

Fail forward

Use stress, don't spread it

When horticulturalists are preparing their plants for life outside the hothouse, they gradually expose them to greater variations of temperature to toughen them up for the variability they will be exposed to in the natural environment. The same principle applies in life. Only by being exposed to situations that put some strain on you — even if that's not always particularly comfortable — can you build your capacity for bigger challenges and perform at your peak.

Conversely, if you're never stretched, over time you lose confidence, resilience and strength. It's why exposure to stress is a vital stimulus for growth. Without it, you can wither on the vine of life.

While life can hold some big challenges, it's the relatively small things that create the most stress in our daily lives. Filing taxes. Family gatherings. Home renovations. Difficult employees. Work deadlines. Minor accidents. Juggling commitments. It's easy to make small problems seem big — stressing about stuff for no other reason than that we've told ourselves ‘it's stressful'. Little wonder Richard Carlson sold millions of copies of his book Don't Sweat the Small Stuff … and it's all small stuff. It spoke to all those people who find it difficult not to stress about the ‘small stuff'.

Of course, stress often gets a bad rap. It's why there's a multibillion-dollar industry built on managing it better. Yet stress itself is not the enemy; it's stressful thinking we need to be careful about. I mean, just think how many times you've heard yourself or others say something like ‘My job/client/study/commute/boss/kids/life is so stressful'.

When we say things like this what we're really saying is that we're responding in stressful ways to these people or situations. The irony is that talking about how much stress you feel only makes you feel more stressed and spreads your stress to others. But it doesn't end there. As your internal stress barometer dials up, your ability to cope with other challenges goes down, sending you into a downward ‘stress spiral'. All the while, the toll mounts — on you and all those around you. It can be a vicious cycle. (I feel stressed just writing about it!)

The reality is that stress itself is not a medical condition, but a psychological one that triggers physiological responses in your body. In fact, there's a direct link between your stress levels and the story you tell yourself about your ability to handle the demands that you think will be placed on you — real or perceived. It all lies in the interpretation.

FOR BETTER OR WORSE, YOUR PERCEPTION BECOMES YOUR REALITY.

So instead of trying to avoid stress, try putting a new spin on it. One that doesn't leave you a powerless victim but that allows you to choose how you respond to it. As you can see from this simple diagram, your greatest power lies in the space between stimulus and response. Just because there's a lot going on or expected of you there's no need to freak out or fall apart. That's on you.

The truth is that you need stress in your life to get out and do what needs to be done: to play your best game. Just imagine if Novak Djokovic was so chilled out that he napped five minutes before he was due to walk onto centre court at the Australian Open, or if Beyoncé was so chillaxed she needed a reminder that she was performing at the Super Bowl in a few hours' time. Neither of these stars would have ever gotten to where they are without a little stress.

Harnessed well, stress enables you to focus on playing your best game and to thrive in life. It sharpens your concentration and makes you more competitive — particularly when the stakes are high and the slightest edge can make all the difference.

IT'S THEREFORE IMPORTANT TO EMBRACE STRESS AS A VALUABLE FORCE OF LIFE THAT CAN BE EITHER HIGHLY CONSTRUCTIVE OR DESTRUCTIVE, DEPENDING ON HOW YOU MANAGE IT.

The truth is that when we're in the middle of a crisis, most people aren't particularly good at forecasting how they'll feel further down the track. In fact, we tend to project our current stress levels indefinitely into the future and assume we'll always feel as we do now. Called ‘negative forecasting bias', it means we tend to underestimate our ability to recover from setbacks and to handle stress. It's not that we aren't hurting or things aren't stressful. It's just that we won't hurt for as long or feel as much stress for as long as we think we will. So no matter how overwhelmed you may feel in the moment, it will get better.

As you think about what you have on in your life right now, consider how you can reframe what you're dealing with so that you approach it with a greater sense of belief in your own ability to handle what's coming your way.

You can start by becoming more mindful about what you're feeling in any given moment and staying alert to your own stress responses: clenching fists, biting nails, speaking fast, irritability or plain old distractedness that leads to misplacing your phone or car keys!

Once you've done this, tune in to what you're telling yourself about the stimulus that is triggering your stress. What language are you using to describe what's going on? Instead of saying (to yourself or others) that you're nervous, say you're excited. Instead of saying someone is stressing you out, say they're challenging you. Instead of describing your situation as a disaster or a nightmare, describe it as challenging but manageable. Instead of describing yourself as a basket-case, remind yourself that ‘you've got this' (because you have!). The very words you use can dial up your stress and turn you into a basket-case or they can dial it down. It's not the situation that determines which; it's you.

SHIPS DON'T SINK BECAUSE OF THE WATER THAT'S AROUND THEM. THEY SINK BECAUSE OF THE WATER THAT GETS IN THEM. DON'T LET WHAT'S GOING ON AROUND YOU GET INSIDE YOU.

To quote Wayne Dyer, ‘There is no stress in the world. Just people having stressful thoughts'. Take responsibility for using stress to serve a positive outcome and for not spreading it to others.

Most things you stress about never actually happen. As I often tell my kids, ‘Live the worry once'.

Rework stress

Shed your old baggage

Anger. Hurt. Blame. Shame. Many people walk through each day weighed down with a heavy load of excess baggage they've accumulated from past experiences that cannot be undone. Yet while it's impossible to change past events, you can change the story you tell yourself about them. In doing so, you can leave the emotions you've carried like a ball and chain where they belong.

In the past.

Ernest Hemingway once wrote that life breaks us all, but some of us become stronger in the broken places. Those who become stronger ‘in the broken places' are not born stronger. Rather, they become stronger because they decide not to let past experiences determine their future. They leave behind the anger, the guilt, the shame and the blame, and carry forward with them only the lessons they hold.

So too can you.

You, and you alone, get to choose whether something (or someone) that has wounded you in the past will make you more isolated or more connected, more broken or more whole. And while forgiveness — of yourself and others — is a decision you may have to make again and again, it's ultimately your decision whether you bless the past and move on, or harbour it and keep hurting. As Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison once said, ‘Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down'.

Of course, you don't need a therapist — much less a book — to tell you that negative emotions about a past that cannot be changed will limit your future, which can. You already know that.

The question is, when will you finally decide to let those emotions go and move on? On your death bed? When you get the forgiveness you want, the apology you deserve or the justice you seek? Let's face it, it hasn't come yet so chances are it never will.

YOUR PAST DOES NOT HAVE TO EQUAL YOUR FUTURE … UNLESS YOU LIVE THERE.

If you're okay with carrying hurt, anger, blame and shame from the past into your future, then go right ahead and keep on keeping on. Just be really clear in your own heart that what you're gaining from hanging onto those emotions is worth what you're giving up. Like your ability to feel a deep sense of joy, peace, intimacy and love in the rest of your life. If you're not sure, ask the people you care about most. Just make sure they feel safe enough to tell you the answer.

EXPERIENCE HAS TAUGHT ME THAT WHATEVER ANGER, HURT, BLAME OR SHAME WE ARE HOLDING ONTO FROM THE PAST, WE CARRY INTO EVERY OTHER RELATIONSHIP IN SOME WAY.

Your past may have shaped you, but it doesn't define you and it certainly doesn't have to limit who you can become. That's your call. Entirely. So let's take a look at your excess baggage. Bring to mind any long-term grudges, hurts, guilt, blame or shame. Then reflect on the following questions.

Lighten the load

Think about a relationship that may have caused you to feel a lot of resentment, heartache or hurt. Then ask yourself:

If you are ready to forgive them, write them a letter (you don't need to send it … just writing it alone can be a powerful execise).

My Hard-won Wisdom