Believe it or not, there are very few things in life that should surprise us.

Over 90% of our lives are predictable.

You wake every day, eat 2 or 3 meals a day and go back to sleep.

Most of the other stuff that fills in those hours are routine too.

My wife and I go to church once a week, I have two regular weekly meetings at my office with my co-workers and the rest I am pretty free to fill in as I need to.

But even with all that flexibility, there are patterns, just as I know there are in your life.

The mortgage and other bills are paid at the same time each month.

The trash man comes weekly.

The mailman arrives every morning.

Life is a series of actions, activities and predictable events 90% of the time.

You have a choice however.

If you’re like me and have a tremendous amount of control of your time, you can decide what to change, what to tweak and what to keep.

Last year, when my routine was vastly different because I would leave the house at 6:30 every morning, drive 45 minutes to my office and return home 12 hours later, I still had certain freedoms to organize my day how I wanted to.

Oh and what about everyone’s favorite small talk topic… the weather.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard someone remark about it feeling chillier this month.

Hint, September in Indiana is always cooler than August…

So about those surprises…

Are they really surprises or are we surprised because we forgot the pattern?