This blog entry came to me during a gym workout. As I began the training I was observing my mind and body struggling to make sense of a situation that seemed impossible. After a while, when my body became tired – the good kind of tired – the “impossible” situation started to appear as secondary and I came up with the following lines in my (not so poetic) mind:
When in doubt – work out! (physical activity and time in nature)
When in pain – breathe again! (breathwork and meditation)
When in confusion & spite – write! (journaling)
Challenges
So what if many of the instances when you get challenged in your life, you’re simply facing the Universe’s answer to your desire for evolution, for a change? What if the Universe was actually telling you: “Really? You want to change? Then this is the kind of event or situation you need to learn to navigate and these are the negative emotions you need to overcome.”
What if the worst thing that happens to you is in fact the best that ever could happen because it’s the only way for you to learn who you need to be in order to live the life you aspire to? What if frustration, resistance and confusion are part of the Path?
By now, it must’ve become clear that certain aspects of who you are today, your behavior, your thoughts and your emotional reactions to “what happens” are not working for you. In a sense, the life you aspire to requires you to think, to behave and to feel differently. Maybe you already put some changes into practice, but your heart is not in it; or maybe you are very excited for a future you can already “see” or “sense” but you don’t take any action steps. That’s ok, we all tend to do that at some point. We just need to rise above that state.
You see, in the process of personal transformation, it’s very important that our inner world of thoughts and feelings is aligned with our outer world of actions and experiences. To put it differently, you need to walk the talk, and that talk has to be aligned with thoughts and feelings related to it.
And this requires us to change… And we only make changes when things get uncomfortable in our life. Hence, the challenges in our life; followed by the frustration, the resistance, the confusion, and many others.
Who you need to be in order to live that life you aspire to is probably someone who manages their behavior and thinking from a place of confidence and trust when dealing with this situation and, therefore, who manages their emotions – e-motion/ energy in motion.
So again, what if the current situation – that one that makes you think “when this is all over or getting better I’ll certainly be better, do better and feel better and finally be able to act towards my aspirations and goals” – is in fact what you need to experience in order to rise above and actually move closer to the life you want to live? What if there’s nothing wrong with you or your life? What if people aren’t acting against you, but in favor of their needs and wants and that’s just not aligned with you or serving you? So maybe all this is, is just you needing to outgrow a situation, an emotion, and even a relationship in order to move to the next level of your existence.
So…
What if it’s all good?
In NLP this is called reframing and it allows us to see a situation or behavior from different angles and give it new meanings.
And how is this linked to the statements I started this blog entry with? Well, when we are flooded by negative thoughts and emotions related to a situation, we tend to make things appear worse in our mind. We apply our personal filters to what is objectively happening and make the situation worse.
The opposite is true as well: by getting out of the loop of negative thinking and feeling – by moving our body, connecting to nature, doing breathwork or meditation, journaling, etc. – we tend to clear the filters, see the situation closer to how it really is and start to tap into our resources and identify paths for resolution. That’s when we start to realize that it is all good. I got this! And that’s the mental and emotional place we want to take our decisions from.
You got this!
