Derek the Diver swam around the ocean floor. It was beautiful. Colorful schools of fish swam all around him. The coral reef and plant life matched h is Apple TV’s HD screensaver. It was beautiful.
To make it even better, we was using a diving propulsion device, known as an underwater scooter. He just held on to the handle, pointed in where we wanted to go, and the little engines did the work for him. The two little propellers in the device pulled him easily along the ocean floor
He was enjoying looking at some sea anemones when suddenly he felt all the water around him start pushing against him, moving him backwards
A current came out of nowhere and started to push him away from the beautiful coral reef he was exploring.
He turned around and saw something horrible
A giant underwater whirlpool had formed and was sucking him toward it.
The shock at the site caused him to let go of the scooter and it sank to the floor
Derek floated away from it, toward the whirlpool.
No! Thought Derek, I can’t let it get me!
He kicked his feet furiously against the current and swam hard with his arms
He was a few feet away from the scooter, but he flipped his flippers hard
With all his might he stretched out his hands and reached for the scooter
If he could just hold it, could just access its power then he could get himself free from the pull of the water
He used all his energy to get himself closer and closer until finally he was able to grab it with one hand
Relieved and exhausted he allowed himself to rest a bit. He floated toward the whirlpool, but it was okay now. He had his scooter.
After a few seconds of rest, he grabbed the scooter with two hands, pointed it away from the whirlpool and squeezed the throttle.
It wasn’t working.
The scooter was on, the engine was turning, the propellers were spinning, but it wasn’t moving him forward.
The suck of the whirlpool was too strong.
He squeezed the throttle hard, begging the scooter to give it all it had
But it was useless
He was just about 20 yards away from the whirlpool now. He knew that he would get sucked into the vortex, tumbling and thrashing. What would happen to his equipment? Would his air tank and hose stay intact? Would he hit the ocean floor hard and get knocked unconscious? Or was it sucking him down into some deep cavernous pit that went miles beneath the ocean floor?
He was doomed
Then, he had a thought. A thought that was just crazy enough it might work.
He held up the scooter and pointed it straight at the whirlpool
He immediately was pulled fast ahead, right toward the center of the vortex
He gained speed, soaring through the water like a missile fired from a sub
Then, he veered to the left
The power and speed he had built up worked, he sailed just past the dangerous grasp of the vortex, curving around it and was flown out of it’s pull around the other side, like a spaceship using the gravitational pull of a planet to slingshot itself around it
Derek had avoided a watery demise.
After his celebration, he surveyed his surroundings. He was in a new place. Much different than where he was. Off in the distance there looked to be another coral reef that he had never seen before.
He looked down at his scooter. It still had over half its battery. Good thing he didn’t waste it fighting the whirlpool, he thought.
Now he had a new dilemma, a more exciting one. Did he go back to where he was? Or did he set off to explore something new?
He smiled to himself, grabbed his underwater scooter, pointed it in his desired direction, and took off.

Lesson for teens
As a life coach I’m all about changing your thoughts to improve your life
But, sometimes things just suck
And changing your thinking doesn’t stop them from sucking
That’s like getting caught in a whirlpool and trying to swim against the current
You don’t get anywhere, you become exhausted, then you give up and just let the current take you down into a giant underwater vortex of doom and destruction
Or at the very least, feeling blah about everything
So what are you supposed to do?
Well, I say when things suck, you suck it up
I know that’s usually a pretty negative way of saying “get over it” but that’s not exactly what I’m saying
I actually want you to suck up the suck,
HERE’S TODAY’S SECRET FOR AN AWESOME LIFE. When things suck, you can use the energy of the suck to take control of the direction the suck is taking you.
Like Derek the Diver in the story.
Sometimes as we are swimming through life, using our thoughts to propel us to places we want to go
We come across something that just sucks
We get dumped
we go through a divorce
We lose the big game
we don’t get hired back the next year at the school we are working at
Our parents get divorced
Our kid has a life threatening disease
And we try to avoid its effects at all costs, even trying to use our thoughts to get away from it entirely
But we find it useless. The suck is too strong.
And if we spend all our time trying to avoid it, we’ll run out of energy then we’re totally at it’s mercy
But, if we take our thoughts and point them towards what’s happening, we can suck up the suck around us and turn it into fuel
Because when we Change our attitude toward our suffering, we can create the fuel we need to get through it
Then we get to determine the transformation the sucky situation will have on us
We accept that we still have to go through it, but we get to decide who we will become on the other side
I can be a better boyfriend to the next girl I date because of getting dumped
I can be a better husband to the next girl because of what I learned through my divorce
Being able to lose well will help me be a better winner next time
I didn’t get hired back at this school, but that won’t stop me from being teacher of the year at my next one
I can be the strong link between my now divided family
I am going to be the strong person my son needs throughout his life to help him deal with his disease
Now we have power and control, if even just a little bit more, and that allows us to navigate our way through the suck
Sometimes, life is just going to suck.
But rather than being pushed through it against your will, tumbling and sputtering,
If you face it firmly, you can suck up the suck
Choose to get a firm grasp on an empowering attitude toward it,
and that attitude toward the sucky situation can pull you along through it all.
And yeah, we’re going to end up in a different place than we wanted to. But our journey’s not done.
And because you didn’t use all your energy fighting the current, you have more energy to keep on going
To get back to where you were
Or to move on in a new direction and discover beautiful new places you didn’t know were out there