Have you been knocked down in life? A better question: WHEN you get knocked down, how do you respond?
Certain events in your life will be obviously drastic and traumatizing, like a divorce or death of someone or something you love.
Others will be difficult, like having a stressful job situation or client who bothers you, but it may fly under the radar. You dismiss it as something you can handle and so don’t pay it much attention. This happened to me in the last year.
I’ve been teaching The Whole Soul Experience for almost 6 years, a weekend workshop where we dig deep into beliefs and use techniques like emotional freedom techniques and hypnosis to begin to rewire our thinking and feeling to better serve us.
Well almost a year ago, I taught the Whole Soul to a group of 10. I thought it went very well, as usual. We had some major shifts in class with folks.
But there was someone who participated until the very end and then asked for a refund a couple of days later. I was blindsided by this request as she seemed to have gotten a lot out of it and was given much attention.
Anyhow, I worked through the situation with her, although it was painful, and I ended up giving her the refund. Since that class, I’ve struggled with filling this event. And it just dawned on me WHY. A part of me made this mean that the workshop opens up too much pain for people.
I believe subconsciously I’ve avoided filling it to keep myself safe from stepping on the landmines of others’ beliefs and pain, thus setting myself up for rejection.
I’m writing to you about this because it just goes to show how subtly the mind and heart work to protect us.
I hadn’t even realized I’d been knocked down. Now I can do something about it. I can redirect how I’m thinking about it, tap using meridian tapping, talk to someone to get a new perspective, etc.
How about you? How do you manage life when you fall down and your pride is bruised?
Do you retreat into a shell and isolate, frozen to move forward?
Do you angrily put up your dukes and say “Screw you, world!” Or do you keep running and staying occupied with “busy work” so you don’t have to think about it or feel the pain. Maybe you do all three.
If we are in any kind of business where we have to “sell,” the ability to pick ourselves back up and remain persistent is so important. It’s so easy to feel sorry for ourselves and think the world is against us, isn’t it?
What if we, instead, focused on this belief: “I am worthy and lovable no matter what THEY think of me…I CAN trust the process of life is supporting me.”
The same is true if we’re in relationship with others, at home or at work. If we develop the courage and resiliency to stay focused on what we want to create in a relationship, we will not look so much at the other’s faults. As a result, we will be much more happy and successful.
I think a great way to define maturity is our willingness and ability to not be defined by disappointment, but to get back up and try again. Don’t make things mean that we’re somehow bad or wrong if things don’t turn out as expected, if we “fail.”
Confession. I’m not emotionally mature in all aspects of my life. I feel hurt, rejected and sorry for myself, just as in the story I told you today. That’s okay because we’re not meant to behave perfectly or adult like all of the time. That would defy the human experience which is meant to have an array of emotions.
Caveat: Please don’t confuse the resilience I’m talking about here with never surrendering or accepting life’s results. There are times when it makes sense to “stop beating a dead horse” and make peace with what IS.
How do we know when we should stop feeling sorry for ourselves, dust ourselves off, and resume the action? Or how do we know when we should say, “Enough is enough. I won’t do this anymore. I surrender!” Both are positons of strength.
That’s an individual matter. I think it has everything to do with how we feel after we make a decision to keep acting or not. If we decide to keep marching towards our goals, and we feel inspired and light about it, great! This reinforces that we’re moving towards our goals because they’re in alignment with our values.
If we feel exhausted and like we’re only being stubborn with a goal because we believe that life should look the way WE want it, and not how it’s showing up, perhaps it’s time to surrender to Life. This is not immature, but wise.
In my case, for example, I really love working with others on a profound level so they can relieve their suffering and have a more joy-filled life. So it’s important that I continue to tell them the truth, when I see there is self-delusion, in order to help them get out of the quicksand of a painful story.
I need to learn to get my love need met from myself, my friends and family, and not from my clients, which leads to over-helping them, which leads to overwhelming them. So the decision to keep tweaking myself and my business model doesn’t feel like stubborn willpower, but more like gentle awareness and progress.
On the other hand, I have an almost 22-year-old daughter, Maddie, who has cystic fibrosis, and I’ve tried her whole life to offer her one solution after another to help her retain her health. I offer her unsolicited advice. She reminds me I need to give her space so she can make her own decisions, even if that includes choices I disagree with.
I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I need to “stay on my side of the street” with Maddie, and this will not be easy for me. I choose to trust her to make the best decisions for her, despite history and my desire to rescue. This is one of the surrender decisions that feels wise, not because I’m giving up on her, but because I want to reclaim my power from the situation, trust her and the process of life, and truly stop feeling sorry for me AND her.
Are you ready to stop feeling sorry for yourself and reclaim your power from a difficult situation? Remember it’s not a judgment that you feel bad for yourself. We all do at some point.
I invite you to attend a workshop Thursday, March 8th from 6-8pm. Register now to get it for $25 by 3/1.
You can use emotional freedom technique (EFT or tapping) to help you discern if it’s time to gain resilience or to surrender to Life and accept things as they are.
Hope to see you there!
Respectfully,
Angie Monko
P.S.: If you want to join others in a small group setting and make YOUR life work first by loving, accepting and forgiving yourself, come to the Frontier to Freedom class.
