Every day of your life you will have experiences or events that occur. Some will be good and some not so good. Some events will be of very little significance, while others will be life changing. What is most important is not the events themselves but how you process the lessons or knowledge to be gained from each experience. Are you learning from the things that happen to you or the mistakes that you make? I am a firm believer and a living testimony that things happen for a reason. The things that happen to us good or bad are opportunities to learn and grow.

If Ive said it once, Ive said it a million times. Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond. When things go wrong in your life, even when they are outside of your control, you still have a choice. You can choose to seek out the lesson, learn from it and move forward with additional knowledge and wisdom. You can also choose to become angry, wallow in self pity and make absolutely no use of the wisdom that is attached. However, the latter has absolutely no value. As a matter of fact, it will be detrimental to your life when you allow negativity to fester, grow and the things that you least desire become your focus. One of the worst things you can do is to repeatedly make the same mistakes because you did not learn the lesson the first time. Quite often there is a very valuable lesson that we must learn before we can take our lives to the next level. Lessons are often a result of adverse situations or mistakes that youve made. Unfortunately when the message or lesson is not received, you can end up locked in a holding pattern of disappointment wondering why you can not move forward in life.

My personal experiences have taken me from welfare to faring well. I was born to teenage parents. Throughout my childhood my family endured financial struggles and many evictions. While my parents were quite young, they were wise enough to give their children a vision of a brighter future. No matter what our circumstances were at the time, my parents were consistent in instilling in us a strong faith in God and a strong work ethic. As a result of my childhood experiences I learned how to persevere through tough times and I acquired a passion for serving others with excellence. I turned these life experiences into career successes in the food industry, as an author and a motivational speaker. I currently use the knowledge Ive gained on my journey to inspire and empower others as a success coach.

Ken Brown is one of Americas most inspiring, insightful life coaches, motivational speakers, entrepreneurs and authors of the 21st century. If youre ready to change your life and make your dreams a reality visit www.KenBrownInternational.com.