What do you do when you get up in the morning with a full schedule of things you need to get done?  Before you are even back in from your morning walk, you receive a phone call that changes your day.  Someone really needs your help, so you do your devotion, quickly pull yourself together and leave.  Not knowing how long you will be gone, you put your computer in the car so you can work if there is waiting time.

The rather emergent situation is handled by early afternoon and you are hungry.  You take your computer and go to Chick-Fil-A for lunch.  You sit there listening to calming music, observing people come and go, overhearing the employees positively assisting customers with a smile and offering blessings for their day.  Small children are screaming with delight, and some just screaming, in the play area.  The sun is shining brightly outside the window where you sit taking care of some of the things on your list and recognizing that you most likely will not accomplish all that you had planned for today.

Do you get upset?  Why bother – it wouldn’t help anything.  Instead, you just enjoy the beauty of the moment, run some errands and make your way back home.

This describes my day today.  As I was running the errands, I listened to a Ziglar podcast in which they played an actual recording of Zig Ziglar presenting on the topic of responding versus reacting to life.  I felt very grateful that I had responded to what my day brought, rather than reacting to it.  Getting upset just uses energy that could be put to better use doing something productive.

What do you do when your plans change unexpectedly?  I encourage you to learn to respond rather than react so you can live . . . life to the fullest.