Shit happens. We all know that.
 And whenever life goes off the rails, whenever we find a discrepancy between reality and our model of how life ought to be, we want to force, yank things back on track.

Life is full of unfortunate unpredictable events.
A job loss, a break up or divorce, a disabled child, an illness, a narcissistic parent, an accident, the death of a loved one, a miscarriage, all these events and people that we would rather not have if we had a choice.

You have probably heard the saying ‘When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.’ This means make the best with what you are given. And it works.
However, ‘Turn shit into manure’ means something else. It means: Whatever happens in our life can be turned into fertilizer – it can be useful for our growth.

The question we need to ask is: What if the challenges and experiences we face in life are a reminder, a teaching or even a blessing in disguise?

Instead of seeing challenges or troubling situations as setbacks, we could view them as opportunities for personal development.

It’s all about dealing with our emotions. Instead of being scared that our emotions will take over and mess with who we are, we could face them. Even though we don’t know how to deal with our emotions but to suppress, project, ignore them, often finding ways to avoid facing them directly, we can learn how to do it.
The remedy is to really feel and understand our emotions instead of pushing them away. Think of it as dancing with your emotions instead of trying to fight them.
The idea is that if we don’t resist our emotions, they become something we can work with, like turning a problem into an opportunity.

Life can be tough sometimes. The key is to face our emotions and situations directly (We will address the ‘how-to’ later on.) This way, we can handle things as they come up and not let them overwhelm us. It’s like taking ownership of our emotions and making life more meaning-full.

Whatever we encounter can actually give us permission to depart from our preconceptions and the old, albeit familiar but often painful ways of doing things and change course.

These moments are crossroads. We can let them be and allow them to disrupt our lives, to act like the agent that is able to crush our rigid concepts and well laid plans and set us free.

They compel or invite us to stop. They say, ‘Slow down, take a closer look and welcome the change.’

What crossroads are you at right now?