Sometimes you have to deal with things that you have no control over. This has been more than clear this week to anyone living in the Carolinas. And it really hit home for me yesterday.

Anyone who has visited me in my office this semester had a chance to see the wrist brace that I’ve been wearing all summer.  And yesterday I finally had surgery to repair that injury.  The surgery went well and now I’m recovering at home for a couple of days. And while I’ve dealt with the aftermath of anesthesia before, this was my first experience with a nerve blocker.  The up side of the nerve block was that I had no pain for 20 hours after my surgery.  The down side was that my left arm was completely numb for that same time.  I had no control whatsoever over its movement.  It was actually fascinating to me.  My left arm was just dead weight (which was MUCH heavier than I would have expected!).  I wore a sling to support it and just had to live without my left arm for the day.  (Teeth and feet become very useful tools when you only have one arm).  I just had to find ways to work around the thing I had no control over.

Sometimes you’ll face financial challenges that you can’t control.  The unexpected auto repair.  The annual tuition increase. The rising price of gasoline.  A medical situation.  The cost of the bar exam.  Air travel for a family emergency.  Financial stress can come in any number of forms that you can’t control.  But what you can control is how you prepare for and react to these things.  A budget.  An emergency fund in savings.  Insurance.  These are all preventative measures to deal with the things you can’t control.  Loans. Credit cards. Side jobs. Selling things you don’t need.  These are all reactive measures you can take to relieve your financial stress.

We will all face things that we have no control over.  But we all have control of how we prepare for and react to these things.