And then it happens…

The recent changes you made to not get into an argument with your partner ended when you blew up over something minor…

You violated your pledge to stop wishing death upon the guy who cuts you off in traffic without a turn signal.  You filled your car with an obscenity laced tirade, in turn leaving you in a bad mood for the next few hours…

Your commitment to exercise regularly ended after a few weeks and you find yourself disgusted with the amount of excuses you come up with to justify your inactivity…

That self help book you just read made so much sense and the ideals were so easy to put into practice.  There would be no doubt that every day would be sunny skies and gumdrop smiles….however, you have a hard time getting out of bed one morning only to think that it’s your fault for not “trying hard enough”.

You were feeling good.  You thought you had arrived.  Everything was clear.  Life was actually beginning to make sense.   Then it happens.  The moment things return to the “way things just are”.   All the work you did to make improvements seems to have been for nothing.

That is not necessarily so.

 

Change the Narrative

It’s a common tendency to put a tremendous amount of energy into our expectations of results.  We set out on our new venture, or change, with some or many expectations.  Whether we like it or not.  It’s conscious or subconscious.  Either way, it happens.  When the results don’t meet our expectations, we view those “results” as “failure”.

That is not necessarily the case.

As with anything we have the ability to change perspective on what we are doing and what is happening to us.  It may be helpful to expect less, or have no real expectation at all.  If changing our behavior (that we have been doing for several years, probably decades) was easy, we’d just take a class or two and be done with it.  Logic rules in our society and logic says when we learn how something works we can “fix” it.  When it comes to the self, the answers to make changes in ourselves do not lie in logic.

 

Using Pain and Hard Times as a Teacher

If we choose to take in the whole experience, not just the good and positive, but even the “bad” too, we can see it for what it really is.  A chance to grow, to evolve, not to be perfect or fix whatever it is that we see is broken.  Instead of focusing on getting rid of our “imperfections”, avoiding the pain of “failure” and disappointment, it might be beneficial to change our perspective on our experiences.

Pain might have a benefit.  “Failing” at something might be good.  A “bad day” might just be what we need.  I admit,  that sounds odd.  However, when we judge an experience as “good” or “bad” we are giving it a meaning and limiting it on what it could be.  We have the opportunity to make our realities.

The guys I counsel here at the hospital live by mottoes such as “one day at a time” and “life is a journey, not a destination”.  There is a tremendous amount of wisdom in those sayings.  Live today.  Allow what is to be and go from there.  Don’t take yourself or life too seriously.  We’re not getting out of here alive.  (For more wisdom, click on the picture below)