Why is it that we are faced with challenges and we crumble? Well, not all of us. Some of us rally. Some people sparkle when the going gets tough. I want to be that person and yet, I am deeply aware that I am not that person. Give me a deadline and I’ll rock it. Give me a project and I’ll nail it. Give me resources and I’ll allocate them. Be mean to me? I melt. I turn into a mushy pile of all the things I wanted to say but couldn’t.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve come a long damn way. I am a much stronger and more resilient person than I used to be. I mean, I had to get a little tougher. There was no way my tattered wings were making through another storm without some sort of fortification.
I’ve set boundaries and acknowledged my weak spots and vulnerabilities. I’ve found strategies that might not work for others but seemingly work for me. I’ve thickened my skin to the point where it isn’t impenetrable, but it’s a helluva lot thicker than it was at one point. I bounce back quicker. I make better decisions. I try to tap into my intuition more often, rather than ignoring those pesky voices.
Still, I struggle. But, I suppose we all do. That is the human condition. We all flay and fail and stumble. It’s not so much that we have to figure out a way to be made of steel. That’s silliness. We just have to find a way to rebound. We have to sort out the lessons we were meant to learn so we can tackle things in a different way the next go around.
This isn’t just about learning about ourselves either. This is learning how to navigate those troubled waters with others. What does that look like? Who are we in the scheme of all of this? It’s NOT easy, but we live freer and happier lives if we can figure some of this out. Of this, I am certain.
Circling back to yesterday, when we witness someone or many people getting away with shit, we have to learn how to roll with that particular thorn in our side. We have to figure out how to respond and when to respond and when to leave well enough alone. We have to be braver with our silence and less bold with our judgment.
None of this is easy. It sucks so bad. It rips our hearts out of our chests and pushes us to the very limit. We are thrown up against walls and the universe challenges us with how much more we can take. I am not saying you want to welcome a battleground, but I am saying that you have to be ready. The secret is making a plan or at least mapping out a course. If you do that, then you can actually stay giving and sweet and generous and even hopeful. You can only remain who you intrinsically are if you don’t allow yourself to be massacred for that very reason.
Think about it, if we allowed ourselves to be gut punched all the damn time for who we are, how long before we deeply desired to change who we are? Would be pretty quick, no? We don’t have to change who we are and what we believe in, but we might have to change how we engage. That’s really fucking hard, but it’s also rewarding work. You get to directly see your work translate to good stuff. We don’t always have that opportunity in life.
I know this is going to sound strange, but for me, it’s like futzing around with a recipe. Do you bake? Cook? Sometimes we are missing an ingredient or two or we want to make something a little healthier, or we deeply desire throwing something in that wasn’t part of the original story. Sometimes we get it right on the first try. Applesauce in my pumpkin loaf? Brilliant. I was able to find some information online and my mix mastering totally did the trick. It was the perfect substitution for just using all oil. Things don’t always work out that way though. There are a ton of times where ingredients dry out the item or produce too much moisture or maybe the flavor is way off. There is a good deal of trial and error that occurs. If you are dedicated enough to the endeavor, you will get it right eventually, but it takes time. There is no real shortcut. Well, you could ask a professional chef or baker I suppose, but you’d still have to do the work of asking and then implementing.
The same way that we change things around in a recipe, we have to figure out different ways to interact with people and conduct our relationships, professional and personal. You might respond in certain way and determine that your response was way too strong. Maybe the opposite occurred, and you found that your response barely provoked anything at all. The crazy part about this practice is that every part of it can change on a regular basis. Even when you think you’ve gotten down the interplay with another human, they’ll throw you a curveball. Maybe they have something else going on in their lives that influences your interaction or maybe they are just having a bad day or maybe the issue you are contending with is quite unlike another other you’ve ever experienced.
You can’t give up though. You just have to keep going back to the drawing board. Trust me on this one. It is not easy, but nothing in life that is worth it really every is, right? I’m going to share something even more dramatic and you might even struggle with this one. You are going to do this your whole life. The recipe will require tweaking forever. You just have to figure out which one you want to pay more or less attention to at different points. You will have to answer for yourself what is worth time and then what is not.
You can choose to be battered every time something happens. If I’m honest, I spent a long time as that person. It sucked. I’m so sorry, but it did. I was tossed around like a tiny pebble in a tidal wave. One day I was dragged along the bottom for the millionth time and I decided that I deeply desired to do things differently. How about you?
x
L.
thepathtoworthy.com 