Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it.

Charles R. Swindoll stated that Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it. If life is only 10% of what happens to us we should feel extremely empowered at the notion that we have so much control over our lives. Everyone at one time or another has felt at the mercy of life, chance, and circumstances but you always have a choice in how you chose to respond to them.
There are some really evil things that happen in our world and knowing how to respond to them will make a difference on how we chose to be in our lives. Everything starts with our perspective on a situation. If how we respond to a situation is 90% of what controls our lives it’s important we have a good solid faith to live by. A person with a negative attitude or the assumption that only bad things happen to them or they are destined to fail and be dumped on is surely not going to succeed in making their dreams come true. But a person who has a strong faith system installed will always have something to give them hope that everything happens for a reason and that evil is not in a dominating force in our lives.
Faith is a word that means one thing but is based on many different belief systems. Faith means you know what you believe deepest in your heart is true. What your definition of truth is may vary. But by merely having faith in something higher than yourself you are in control of how you chose to view life instead of life choosing how you view it. Why do you want outside circumstances and events to chose how you feel and how you make your decisions. Shouldn't your heart and faith do this for you.
If you are living in a place where there is war and death all around you how do you survive? With your faith. If you are constantly being kicked while you are down what are you going to do to get back up again? Some people do not chose to get back up they are the ones who have no faith. They are the ones who let circumstance and life chose how they feel and live. But if they were to have a healthy faith system within them they would be able to get back up every time and move forward in their faith.
So what if you do not have a faith system developed and you realize your response truly is what controls your happiness in life? You then need to sit down and decide what it is you believe in. You need to find your heart and what it truly believes in. It does not have to be a symbol or a religion or even an entity. It just needs to be something that comes from your heart and that you feel at the deepest level of who you are. You can make it up but as long as you believe in it and it is true and of pure intent it will get you through the hardest of times. It will get you through those times because your response will be positive when life deals you a challenging hand. It will get you through the tough times because your response is 90% of how you respond to life and you have chosen to follow it from your heart. Your religion, your beliefs, your views on life do not matter to me nor should they matter to the person standing next to you but matters is how you chose to express them. Be true to yourself and live life from the heart. You will never fail if you are true to who you are and you live your faith, whatever that faith may be.