Life Isn’t Fair – Get Over It!
by Daryl Daughtry, Publisher
Yes, life isn’t fair, but so what! All that really matters is accepting and dealing with it…
We have heard it before and we have all probably uttered it a few hundred times in our lifetime, “That’s not fair!” While it’s true that life isn’t fair, obsessing over this point won’t get you too far. Life isn’t fair. It never was and it never will be.
Our awareness of this fact began in early childhood when a sibling got more dessert than you or a friend got to go to summer camp and you didn’t. As you got older, a classmate showed off their new smart phone and, at 16, a different classmate got a cool car for their birthday. Highly frustrated and moaning, you blurt out, “That’s not fair!”
Can you imagine living in a monarchy that’s ruled by a King or Queen and you just happen to be the second or third child born to the royal couple. So, your older brother is heir to the throne and you’re left with a title and you’re expected to appear at a lot of pompous events to smile, wave, and shake a few hundred hands. You express how you feel about your lot in life by saying, “That’s not fair!”
Even more demoralizing is the realization of the “commoners” who see the royal family living a life of luxury merely due to the fact that they won the ancestry lottery. Their bewildered complaint, and you guessed it, is… “That’s not fair!”
I could go on seemingly forever listing all of the unfairness that exists in this world. Unfair circumstances brought on by things like race, religion, nationality, culture, finances, connections, corruption, and on and on it goes. There will always be something or someone triggering the words, “That’s not fair!”
I don’t know when this concept that we are entitled to fairness, or anything else for that matter, began. I do know that we can rant, rave, protest, fight, legislate, and even pray; but unfairness will still exist for billions of earth’s inhabitants. Justice, on the other hand, is very possible and available for many, but that’s a subject for another day.
Get Over It
I use the phrase “get over it” in a way that is intended to encourage you to overcome it. You get over or around whatever situation you face by becoming solution-minded versus victim-minded. A solution-minded person who is stubbornly persistent can make an amazing impact on their circumstances. You may not overcome it overnight, but you will certainly fail if you quit or don’t even try at all.
If you want to thrive and achieve anything, you must learn how to shift your focus from the fact that life isn’t fair to the most important thing impacting your personal success, and that thing is how you respond to life when things don’t go fairly. By accepting that life’s unfairness happens to us all, those who focus on what they can control and how they will respond to life’s challenges have the ability to channel their personal power into actionable progress and ultimately the type of life they wish to experience.
Change your reaction from “that’s not fair” to… “That’s not fair, but it’s not going to defeat me!” Ask the awesome God who created you to guide you and give you strength.
While there is no way to avoid the lack of fairness life sometimes has to offer, if you’ll spend more of your energy looking inwardly at the power and abilities God gave you, you’ll be able to tap into that to conquer challenges and overcome adversity. It’s when we call upon the inner strengths we have been given that we become truly powerful.
Life isn’t fair. Life never was fair. Life will never be fair. Get over it. Get around it. Get going…
