As the famous saying goes, “life happens.” And when it does, sometimes we feel forced into a decision we do not want to make. But as individuals, we always have a choice, even if  the decision in front of you is a tough one. And when you listen to your inner self, you realize that you know the decision that is best for you.

One of the activities I do with my clients when they have a tough decision in front of them is to write out the pros and cons of each decision. I have a particular format in which I set up all of the choices in front of them. We go through a series of questions as we fill out the exercise. Not once, in my three years of coaching, has anyone been unsure about their decision once we’re done with the exercise.

The exercise is really not that complicated. All the client is doing is writing down the assets and liabilities of each decision. But what makes the activity so effective? When faced with a tough decision, many people panic and convince themselves that they don’t know what to choose. They don’t realize that if they choose something that doesn’t work for them, there is always an opportunity to make another decision that works better.

The questioning I do as a Collegiate Career Coach simply makes people conscious of their feelings towards the options they have in front of them, and the resulting impact of choosing each option. In panic mode, people are not able to think clearly and therefore make their choice out of fear.

Choices out of fear never work. Why? Fear-based decisions are based off of what you do not want to attract in your life. But making a decision from that mind frame will only bring what you do not desire into your life.

Choices made with a clear and centered mind always work, because you can see all of your options and evaluate the risks you are or are not willing to take in making a tough decision.

These negative thoughts completely cancel out the thoughts of the good stuff that’s happening in our lives. So, when I’m faced with a challenge, I have learned to practice a gratefulness exercise.

Just recently, my laptop crashed and my hard drive was completely corrupted. As a writer, this was my worst nightmare. One of the things that made it even worse is that I always planned to back my information up, as all tech professionals suggest, but I just kept putting it off because I felt I was always too busy to just stop by the store and get it.

The day after I found out that I would have to pay $1,095 to get my data recovered and purchase a new laptop, which was another $1,000, I noticed my thoughts were only focusing how upset about the entire situation. As I was walking into school the next day, I acknowledged my thoughts and chose to turn them into something different. I started thinking of all the things I am grateful for in my life: my family, my friends, my recent move to Florida, my new job at Seminole State College, etc. All of a sudden I could feel my face brighten up and feel at ease. The positive energy transferred into my classroom. My students were upbeat and ready to learn.
If we are not conscious of our negative thoughts, we can easily fall into a bad mood. When we encounter other people with our bad mood, what’s the likelihood they will want to be nice to us or even be around us?

Sometimes the voices in our head are implanted by other people telling us what we can and cannot accomplish. But remember that you and only you can control the limits you set on your abilities. If someone else is telling you what you are not capable, that has nothing to do with you. It is only a reflection of the limits that person has in their own mind.

Always remember the principle that being happy does not come from having a perfect life and things always going our way. It’s focusing on what is going well in your our lives and building off of that. If we truly believe, accept and practice this principle, our challenges will be resolved with ease.

As a professor, business owner, writer, daughter, sister, aunt and friend, I want to get everything done, sometimes all in one day. Yet, I have learned that when I overload my list of activities, I run myself down—physically and mentally. When I run myself down, I’m unable to perform my activities on the level to which I would prefer.

So each week I make myself a list of priorities, which I call, “My List of Dreams to Fulfill.” Knowing what my overall goals are, I list all the activities I would like to complete in order to fulfill them. I then rank the list in order of priorities. I almost never complete the entire list by the end of each week, but the most important activities that I’ve identified as important are always done. And the activities that I have ranked and not finished are either removed from my list due to its lack of importance or move up in rank for the following week. Allow yourself to be okay completing the top three. That’s an accomplishment wroth of celebration.

Another key to managing your activities is asking for help. You’ll be surprised at how your family and friends really want to be a part of helping you fulfill your dreams. And for my professional business activities, I hire others who specialize in activities they complete far quicker than I would, especially with my busy schedule.
Hiring someone to do your work in college is definitely not a wise idea because, in addition to cheating, you will never know the information yourself. However, seeking extra help from your professor or your school’s tutoring center will allow you to complete your work with more confidence and in a timely manner. If there is someone in your class who seems to understand the material that you may be struggling with, get their contact information and arrange a study session together.

People explain things in different ways. Hearing the information from someone else might give you some clarity and allow you to complete your work in a timely manner. The more you understand, the easier it will be for you to complete your work.

So go ahead and create your own personal “Dreams to Fulfill” list, and seek help from others around you.

When faced with a challenge, the first step is to accept the challenge and embrace it. It might sound crazy, because challenges are usually viewed as a source of causing some level of difficulty in our lives. Only after the challenge has been embraced can you deal with it on a higher sense of consciousness. Looking at the challenge or problem from a different perspective will reveal the multitude of choices you have in front of you. It’s all about how you react to the situation.

One of my favorite quotes by Albert Einstein is, “You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.” This simply means looking at the challenge or problem in front of you with a new set of eyes, a set that is willing to look outside the box in order to come up with the solution that works best for you.

I may be a life coach, but I’m also human like everybody else. I like it when my life runs smoothly without problems. But I also realize that my life will only run as smoothly as my mind is willing to allow. If I can open my mind up to the opportunities that a challenge has to offer, I don’t need to get stressed out about the situation.

Recently, I made an appointment for a very important meeting to be held on a Thursday. The meeting meant a lot to me in a variety of ways. I was grateful to have it. In order to prepare for this meeting, I had asked a friend to send me 4 lbs. worth of documents from New Jersey to Florida.

She shipped it on a Monday, and we both anticipated and were told that I would receive it that Tuesday evening two days ahead of my meeting. I was charged for the price of the overnight delivery. I had no doubt in my mind that it was going to arrive Tuesday evening and planned on picking it up from the front desk of my building after my USTREAM.tv show I hold live every Tuesday night.

As I was writing this very exact article, I had so much to say about turning challenges into opportunities that I got a bit of writer’s block. My usual remedy for writers block is to scan the Internet for awhile, and then go back to what I’m writing. Often I’ll see something that will spark an idea or lead me to the next thing I want to express.

Believing that everything happens for a reason and there are no coincidences, I don’t think checking my personal email instead of scanning the Internet just happened by chance. I checked my email and realized that my friend had been sending emails all day and was in touch with UPS to rectify a challenge that occurred with the shipping of the package. Although I was charged full price for overnight shipping, the package was sent ground and was scheduled to arrive Thursday night. But my meeting was scheduled for Thursday morning.

Because of my fear about how not having the papers would negatively affect the meeting, I was about to express my frustration with the customer service representative at the company. But I thought consciously thought through the situation first, before reacting. I chose to consider the opportunities I could gain from the situation. It turned out I gained two opportunities.

First, I was able to negotiate a solution with the manager. As soon as I was transferred to her, she began to explain to me that there was nothing she could do and told me to deal with the store from where the package was shipped. She said, “I’m sorry, but I’m not the one who made the mistake.”

Speaking with her on a higher energy level, I acknowledged that she definitely was not at fault, but assured her that as a manager working out of the national office of her company, she was more than capable to help me resolve the situation. Positive communication in a challenging situation is always an opportunity to encourage myself and others who may be involved.

It did. Immediately, the confidence level in her voice perked up and her desire to help was apparent in her voice. And that’s exactly what she did. She took five minutes to think outside of the box, and resolved the situation almost immediately.

Another opportunity I gained from the situation was that I no longer had writer’s block. I believe in the theory of whatever intention you put out into the Universe is what you are going to receive back. I was looking for something to write with a good example of a recent challenge, and I was presented with one.

With any challenge my clients face, I have them write down the challenge so that they can embrace and understand it better. Then I have them write out any opportunities they can see from the situation. Depending on the circumstance, some challenges may be easier to see opportunities from than others. As a result, I am there to ask them questions to reveal the different opportunities they are willing to view from their perspective.

You must decide for yourself which category feels most appropriate for you. Even if someone else wants to challenge you in a confrontation, take the time to recognize that the confrontation can only take place if you involve yourself in it too. It’s easier to choose peace if you look at the challenging person and your situation with the person you have identified as challenging as an opportunity to learn something about yourself.

Whether the “challenging person” is someone you choose to surround yourself with or someone who just happens to be in your class at school or in your workplace, you technically have a relationship with him or her. Remember that relationships teach you more about yourself. The characteristics you love about someone else are characteristics you possess within yourself. The “funny” thing is that the thing that irks you about that “challenging person,” is a characteristic you possess, too.

A longtime childhood friend of mine finds every opportunity to be right and finding peace is not as much of a value for her than it is for me. The one thing that used to irk me the most about her was that she always tried to tell everyone what to do with their life. As a life coach, that’s completely against the grain of what I believe. I believe everyone has their own answers inside of themselves. After seriously looking at myself and my personality, I realized this bothered me so much because I also sometimes thought I knew—and expressed—what the best answer was for people, especially when it came to family and friends. I turned this realization into an opportunity to change that unappealing characteristic. If I despised that quality in others, I surely didn’t want it anymore for myself.

Through meditation and affirmations to change my way of thinking, I learned to love people for who they are no matter what decision they made. I learned that I am responsible for me, and each person on this earth is responsible for themselves. This lesson improved my life coaching skills, and also my time spent with family and friends. It was obvious my family and friends felt more comfortable around me, because of my change of attitude. The most interesting part, to me, was that I no longer judged my childhood friend. I didn’t even notice that characteristic within her anymore.

We all know or have met someone in our lives that we have found it difficult to get along with. Take it as an opportunity to learn something more about yourself, look for where that characteristic shows up in your life, and use it to make yourself who you really want to be.

Everyone is responsible for themselves and the choices they make in life. It’s never anyone else’s fault that a decision did not work out. Taking responsibility for a decision does not mean that if the decision does not work out that we blame ourselves. We simply just need to learn from it, and make a decision that works out better.

One semester I taught a student who constantly came to class 15 to 20 minutes late, if he showed up at all. Even when he did attend class, he never did the assignments. He always had an excuse as to why the assignment was not completed. I held one-on-one conferences with him every other week to let him know that his behavior was causing him to fail the class. Yet, he continued his behavior until I told him that his failing average was so low there was no possible way he would be able to pass the class.

Guess who’s fault it was? According to him, it was my fault. He said he didn’t know he was doing that bad and wanted me to give him the opportunity for extra tutoring and rewriting papers. These were both suggestions I had offered him earlier in the semester. But after ignoring my suggestions for months, a failing average was the end result at the end of the semester. The student wound up threatening me physically. Security ended up escorting me around campus the rest of the semester.

Unfortunately, this student did not learn anything from his classroom actions. He would not take responsibility and admit that his failing average had anything to do with himself. As a result, he is more likely to continue his behavior in another classroom or work.

Of course, as his professor, I was not happy about the situation. Not only was it a scary situation for me personally, but I also want to see all of my students be successful. I know that’s a very ambitious ideal on my part, yet I still believe in the possibility of it.

I do believe there is a chance my former student may learn from this situation later in the future. If he does, he may learn one of the biggest lessons in life.

A few semesters ago, I had a student in my class who said she couldn’t concentrate because the girl next to her in the computer lab was disruptive. Instead of paying attention, she said the girl spent much of her time trying to sneak to check her email and her Facebook. The young lady who approached me about the situation said this was the reason she only had a low C in the class. She said she normally performs much better in writing classes.

I constantly scan the computer lab for students trying to do outside activities on the computer, though there are some that get by my radar before I catch it. I told the complaining student I would pay careful attention to the young lady she was sitting next to, but that there was something she could do herself that could prevent her from being disrupted. She realized I was hinting that she could move her chair.

The thought of moving her chair frightened her because she didn’t want the other student to be mad at her. I asked her on a scale from one to ten— one being the lowest and ten being the highest—which one choice was more important to her, moving her chair and being able to concentrate or sitting next to someone disruptive who might get mad if she moved. I could tell she was nervous at the start of the next class, but she did move up to the front row. Later, I asked her if the other young lady ever said anything to her, and she did not.

It is never anyone else’s fault that you find yourself in a less than winning situation. It’s our own choices or decisions that place us in a position we don’t want to be in. We can always take responsibility and make another choice. Instead of wasting your time pointing your finger at other people, know that you are the only one who has control over you and what you choose to do in life.

Here are a few things you can do before the school year appears:

1. Take a mini vacation. Whether you go near or far, now is the time to get away before you don’t have time to do so. There are some advance ticket and last minute ticket deals out there, so do your research online and take advantage of the fabulous discounts.

2. Catch some extra z’s. Allow your body to get some rest. The school year sometimes bring around a schedule, which causes you to pull some all nighters. Resting up now will give your body the reserve fuel you might need in a month or so. Even though your body needs the rest, make sure you don’t overdue it. Going to bed at 4 a.m. and sleeping in until 1 p.m. will make it more difficult to adjust your sleep schedule around, especially if you have morning classes. 

3. If you’re not familiar with your school, stop by the campus or building now to find your classes. Not knowing where you are going on the first day only adds anxiety to your first day of meeting new instructors and classmates.

4. Find something you are interested in reading. If you’ve been hanging out all summer, your brain might have gotten used to limited activity. Get it up in gear with starting to read more often. Pick up a last minute summer book, pick up the newspaper, or pick out your favorite magazine.

5. Spend some extra time with friends and family. During the school year, it sometimes becomes a challenge to balance school, work, and your social life. Fit your loved ones in now while you have the time. They’ll be sure to understand when life get busy soon. 

In our current society, most people’s thoughts are centered around worry, fear, and stress over a variety of topics. We worry about work. We worry about school. We worry about family and other close relationships. And the list could go on. A lot of that worry and fear stems from how we feel about ourselves.

Learn the five steps to building positive affirmations for yourself and your life. Watch the recorded version at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/create-the-career-of-your-dreams-phenomenon.