Back in 1994, while I was at AIT (Army job training) in Fort Gordon, Georgia, I went with friends to watch a new movie named “Forrest Gump.” It was extremely entertaining, but there was a minor point that bothered me.

At multiple points in the movie, Forrest says, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

There’s a reason that bothered me, and it actually started to become somewhat of a sociological point in my mind.

Although my research couldn’t provide a solid date, according to what I could find, candy companies started printing guides to what’s in the box of confectionary goodies well before the 1950s (the time when Forrest Gump’s mother would have first told him her wise words).

So, while Forrest could be forgiven for not having gained that information, it seems irresponsible for his mom. And, while I’m somewhat joking about this, it raises a point that started to sink in all the way back in 1994. Life is harder and more disappointing when you don’t follow directions.

Quite simply, if you don’t take just a few seconds to read under the candy lid, you kind of deserve to get a piece of disgusting chocolate-covered coconut (it’s a texture thing for me —yuck) stuck in your mouth. In other words, your lack of initiative to answer questions leads to your own disappointment.

It got me to thinking about other existing pieces of advice, and how they are generally accepted as wise pearls. It led me to devise my own piece of advice. Let me know if you like it:

A little-known fact is that the lemon wasn’t a naturally occurring fruit. It was engineered by crossing a bitter orange with a citron. So, life didn’t give us lemons. We gave them to ourselves. So stop creating your own problems and start focusing instead on solutions.

Sometimes the solution to our problems is as close as being directly under the lid. And sometimes our problems aren’t exactly problems. But then again, sometimes those problems exist simply because we placed them there.

One important lesson I learned several years ago is that your focus determines your outcome. If you focus on bad things, then that’s what you’re going to see.

And some of us are just hardwired to see threats around every corner. Some of us are bred to fear change or different ideas. It’s understandable, because the human brain is a survival mechanism. We evolved to detect threats as easily as possible to maximize our odds of survival.

But, we also tend to need to feed that drive and we end up making our own grief. And that’s an understandable component of the human condition.

If you find yourself feeling disappointed and overwhelmed, might I suggest that you simply take a look under the lid. Or, maybe just take a moment and consider if you created your own problem. Because you might find that you can just as easily create your own solution.