Now don’t get all excited…the word dealer here is meant as in a card dealer, not a drug dealer. Just wanted to set the record straight from the beginning; although the response if you thought it was the latter would have been funny. Getting back to matters at hand. Picture yourself in a casino and you sit down at a table to play Blackjack or Poker. The dealer deals the cards and you bet your hand based on the information you have and for some even their intuition. How good are you at betting on the hand you’re playing and what if you were the dealer?
I was recently reading the book “The Little Book On Meaning” by Laura Berman Fortgang. It’s a pleasant book, no big revelations, but Fortgang’s stories are entertaining. I read the following quote and felt it was something everyone needed to hear, “How many times do we misinterpret the things we see and hear in our lives? How often do we stack the cards against ourselves through out interpretation of events, robbing ourselves of what can be meaningful in the name of fear?” Powerful, don’t you think?
So let’s put you in the seat of the dealer. Even though casinos want you to believe everyone has equal chances of winning, the truth is in most cases the house wins. If that’s the case, then let’s make you the house. How do you want to play your hand? If your hands (literal and figurative) weren’t tied what would you be doing differently today than you did yesterday?
The biggest question from the quote is how will fear alter your betting strategy? How will fear cloud your vision so you don’t play your best, in fact you probably are throwing your opportunity away because of the fear. This is the time in spite of the fear that decisions and actions have to be set in motion. There’s always time for fear, but a limited time to move toward health and healing. If you don’t short circuit playing the hand of fear it will snowball into something beyond your control. Let’s keep things in check, take the upper hand when dealing the cards and play like your life depends on it!
Pilgrim Pathway/Surviving Strong 