'The way you perceive and look at the world is a choice.'
~ David Foster Wallace
Benefit or Misfortune … Gift or Burden … Miracle or Tragedy … Good Luck or Bad Luck … Success or Failure … Good Fortune or Hardship ???
How do you respond during life’s trying moments? My belief nowadays is that we always have a choice of one way or the other. To be honest, I had many ‘glass half empty’, ‘the worst is going to happen’, ‘this is dreadful’ kind of feelings throughout my life. For someone like me, who spent her life trying to fit in, be accepted and please everyone, it’s very easy to become molded into thinking one way or another. Our family, our friends, our co-worker’s attitudes can easily shape us. And then we jump right onto the same bandwagon. Which I did many times.
But perhaps, if we take a moment – or two or three – in stillness, we might just come up with a new way of thinking. Our own way. The way our true self wants us to think. I’m a strong believer that our true self is very smart. She wants us to be our best selves. She wants the best for us. She wants the best for others too. She is loving, and wants us to be loving as well. And compassionate, caring, understanding, accepting, non-judgmental. All those things down deep that I hope we all strive for, but realistically are hard to reach on a consistent basis throughout our whole lives.
I used to roll my eyes when I read stuff like what I have just typed! Bunch of new age mumbo jumbo I often thought. But little by little, over time I began to soften and lean into this kind of thinking. As I look back on some of my own life’s trying moments, they really were blessings disguised as curses. I’m not saying they were easy to go thru. I could wallow, feel sorry for myself and ruminate for days, weeks, months and yes, years over some of them. But sooner or later, a new door would crack open. A new path. A better way. A new chapter. And you know what? Some of those turned out to be miracles! New relationships, better relationships, new adventures, exciting prospects, and new passions.
So now, in my wiser and hopefully more mature self, I try to step back and really look at situations that present themselves as curses, setbacks, tragedies, etc. with a different perspective. Granted it is easier with the smaller grievances. I have recently gone through numerous ones as I have embarked on this new journey of building a platform for my writing experience. Quite a few struggles and backward steps in this whole process has produced many headaches. But it has also produced quite a few proud moments as I realize what I have created in a few short months. My initial work with one publisher was a bit of a challenge, but it ended up teaching me more about the publishing business than I ever would have imagined. I am so better prepared now as I move forward. The unplanned expense of my new computer, although depleting a chunk of my savings, has made my website creation so much easier, more efficient and faster. Carving out big chunks of my days to learn about and do my own website design, at the expense of my golf, friend and family time, has brought back a passion for creativity which has been dormant for many years.
Day to day setbacks are always going to crop up for us. The car conking out. The furnace needing repair. You dumped coffee down your front as you got in the car to head to work. Whiffing your second golf shot into the water after a good drive on the 15th hole. It’s so easy to make the first response to these happenings as one of ugly anger. This is where a couple of deep breaths come in handy. And then I try to come up with the other side of the coin. Perhaps even a little giggle, because sometimes these things can be amusing, and you just can’t make them up.
Maybe a Good Samaritan stopped to help when the car broke down, and a lifelong friendship ensued. Taking a day off of work to be home for the furnace repairman allowed you the time to finally clean out the pantry, and now it is a joy to behold. When you went back inside to change your shirt after the coffee dump, you realized that it was on inside out! And about that golf shot? You get to remember to focus on the next shot, put your best swing on it, land on the green, make a good putt and you end up with just a bogey, not worse. In the big scheme of things, these little setbacks don’t deserve a lot of negative energy. They just happen, and just as easily, there should be another way to look at them that doesn’t put a dark cloud over the moment or worse, your whole day – and the day of those around you too.
It’s kind of the same thing when we are confronted with some ugly conversation, folks trying to exert their power over us, or a roundtable of gossip. Instead of getting upset and giving too much attention to the difficulty, perhaps these situations can be opportunities. Opportunities to be the voice of calm. Rather than jumping into the fray and reacting heatedly, we can calmly respond instead. Sometimes just an ‘I’ll get back to you on that’ might be the ticket. Then we can walk away feeling a tiny bit better about the situation and all of us involved. Always keeping in mind that others are facing their own sets of blessings vs. curses and believe it or not, most times their own struggles have nothing to do with us.
But how do you handle the big, sometimes life altering misfortunes and tragedies? Again, a bit of stillness should surely help. A time to put things into context. A time to think of how you just might be able to manifest a better, different outcome or thought process. A time to be thankful and grateful for all the good things that do happen in our lives, and the loving people that surround us. I believe it is true that some of these bigger happenings in our lives, eventually bring us closer with one another. And closer to our true, higher selves. As my good friend says, ‘maybe the universe is conspiring in your favor’. We just need to be patient.
I am a big believer in trying to avoid being the victim when those big bad things happen. It’s ok to recognize that you are hurt, sick, heartbroken. And it’s ok to feel those things too. You have to own and accept those feelings. But you don’t have to let them own you. There are always different, more positive and constructive ways to look at the difficulties and curses in life. And with practice I believe we can all turn ourselves into beautiful, thriving survivors.
How do you look for the good, the blessing, the miracle on the other side of the curse?
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