Many people believe that being spiritual means being happy. We know that’s not true. As human beings, we play host to a variety of emotions. We can’t simply chose one and claim it. We must feel all of them.

It’s human nature to feel angry when someone wrongs us or to feel sad when our feelings are hurt. We might feel envy when we see someone leading a seemingly perfect life while we struggle just to put food on the table. We also might feel regret when we’ve made a decision that greatly impacted our lives. This is normal. It’s what we do with these emotions that truly counts.

Being spiritual means that you understand and appreciate the emotions that you feel and turn them into something positive. You acknowledge the anger and sadness, but realize that it happened because it is part of your journey. If you didn’t experience sadness, would you still be able to appreciate joy to its fullest?

I believe that we have all lived many lives. Each life is a learning lesson and once we’ve accomplished what we need to, we move on and then return to live another life with another lesson. If you feel as though your life is filled with constant challenges, maybe this is the lesson you were sent to learn. When you see someone who appears to live a charmed life, perhaps they lived a more difficult life their last incarnation and have earned a breather. Or, maybe they just hide the pain better than other people and celebrate their wins more than they announce their losses.

The next time you experience a life challenge, look at it differently. Instead of being angry at the life you were given, look at how you react to the challenge. Do you attempt to remedy it with the same methods you’ve always employed?  Sometimes these challenges continue to come to us because we refuse to embrace them and learn from them. Try to do something different the next time it happens. See it as an opportunity to grow and learn and then let it go. Don’t hold onto it, using it as a blueprint for the rest of your life. Focus instead on the things that actually went right in your life, the things that made you stronger and brought you joy.

Once you do this, you raise your personal vibration and begin attracting other high vibrational emotions and people. Like attracts like. If you embrace joy and abundance, that is what will come to you.

I truly believe that most things in life happen for a reason. Once I adopted that mentality, I began to see the intricate network of life lessons being served to me. They didn’t come written on a chalkboard, they came as moments. How I chose to handle them determines my fate.

Live. Believe. Be happy.

Joni Mayhan is a paranormal investigator and the author of 15 paranormal books, including her newest book Signs of Spirits – When Loved Ones Visit. Click on the photo below to learn more about this book