Welcome to the school of life. Our challenges in the areas of relationships, health, finances, making a living and finding our purpose are all part of the real-life curriculum.

It's all about choices folks. You, as a student in our school, can chose a variety of different subjects all offered at different levels of difficulty. Each level of difficulty leads to a different exit point, some straight out into the world of hard knocks, some into a more specialized area perhaps at a higher level of learning. Which one's will you choose? Be careful, choose carefully as it can make the difference as to what neighbourhood your family lives in; what college or university your children can go to; what kind of car you will drive; if you are going to be happily married or if you will enjoy good health until a ripe old age.

We make the best choices available to us based on how we see the world, so the trick is to pay attention to how we do see our world. Are you a victim in your world? What about a punisher, an accommodator, a worrier, a controller or the proverbial bull in the china shop? What do you place centre stage in your map of the world everyone else, money and things, yourself? How you see the world is a delicate balance between selection and interpretation. You choose to pay attention or select certain pieces of information from the millions of bits that come at you on a regular basis. The information that you choose to pay attention to is passed through a variety of filters that you have in place that allow you to interpret it. These filters will be based on beliefs that you have collected enough evidence to support as true. Armed with these beliefs, you now have a map of how you choose to see your world.

Ultimately it's our decisions or choices that determine our destiny. How you live is the result of who you have chosen to spend time with; how you've chosen to spend your money; what you've chosen to learn or not learn; what you've chosen to eat, smoke, drink; what you've decided your worth, what you believe you are capable of etc. These represent the option or course selection sheets in our school of life.

There is a curriculum attached to this school of life. We are to learn certain lessons and the subjects we chose determine how we are to learn the lessons. If we choose Life 101, the lessons may be painless whereas Life 201 might offer a more painful version of the same lesson. Either way we are going to learn that lesson one way or another. If you don't pass the course the first time you take it again and again until you get the lesson being taught. Only then can you move on to the next one. Take as long as you like, after all you have a lifetime!

Look again at your so-called challenges, those areas in your life that cause you the most grief and learn to see them as blessings in disguise. Buried inside each one is an important life lesson an opportunity to pass to the next grade and a whole new curriculum. Challenge yourself and live the life you are meant to live.