Falling in love turns our world
around. Having children, moving to a new place, getting married, getting
divorced, getting a new job, retirement, deaths, accidents, births,
accomplishments, graduations—all have the potential to destabilize our worlds.
Every one of these transitions puts us into a state of flux so none of us are a
stranger to the phenomenon.
Unfortunately, no matter how
common transitional funks and confusion may be, what is also common are
mistakes we make when trying to deal with them. Here are three of the errors we
tend to make when facing a change—and what we might do instead:
1. We suffer alone. We think, “I'm the only one…” Time and time again
I have seen people from teenagers on up think that they are the only one who
felt a certain way or they were the only one who suffered from a change or
tragedy. Sometimes guilt keeps us silent, feeling like we shouldn’t feel the
way we do.
When, instead, we open up about
what we are experiencing and tell the truth, we often discover that others have
had similar experiences and feelings and we truly aren’t alone. In fact, others
who have been through similar events are often able to help us to heal and move
forward by sharing their hard-earned wisdom.
2. We get stuck on the drama of the bad news
story or perceive the wrong lesson. We look at
our past experiences and choices as mistakes rather than realizing that, with
time and perspective, even the worst circumstances have something to offer. In
truth, the way we see things can improve or neutralize with time.
For instance, someone told me
about how he was seriously ill and hospitalized, which at the time seemed
awful. But when he and his nurse fell in love and got married, he was grateful
for the illness.
When someone hurts us, we tend to
think the lesson is “not to trust,” when the more valuable lesson might be to
“be more discerning and aware.” Or, perhaps the lesson is “I need to
self-strengthen so that I trust in myself and Spirit more.” In my observation,
anytime the lesson we glean shuts our hearts, makes us more unhappy,
distrusting or less loving, we have missed the real lesson and need to look
again.
While we may move to gratitude
eventually, my invitation to you is to see if you can move to gratitude
immediately—even before you know what the blessing is. In my experience, when
we let go of the resistance to what is, the blessing becomes obvious faster.
The exercise in self-mastery here
is about disempowering the events that happen and the things other people do,
and empowering the way we respond to all that happens.
3. We
only capture our suffering in our journals or story telling, reinforcing the
pain. Unless we are mindful, we simply
retell the “what happened and who done it” story. Then, when we reread or look
at our journals, they are full of the sad and painful experiences and devoid of
the joyful, juicy blessings that surround us.
As Einstein pointed out, “We
can’t solve problems from the same kind of thinking that created them”, so it
behooves us to access a different way of thinking. What if, in our journals or
even silent inquiry, we explored the thought of “How was this a blessing to
me?” or “What qualities and strengths did I draw from to resolve this?” Or
“What am I grateful for?” Imagine how improved our self-strengthening for
handling the next transition would be!
When we learn to access the
wisdom and creativity of our soul, we gain a “new kind of thinking” and all the
resources we need for resolving problems. This empowers us to not only handle
the transitions that we face, but embrace them and even look forward to them as
our greatest source of growth.
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